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Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you bestselling author Steve Vernon, author of Sinking Deeper OR My
awesome brilliant Questionable Heroic Decision to Invent a Sea Monster. Please read my review HERE.
Steve has published over fifty short stories, as well as the books Halifax Haunts, Wicked Woods, Haunted Harbours, and his children's picture book, Maritime Monsters. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Steve, it's my pleasure to welcome you to my author interview corner. 😉 I have been wanting to do this for awhile and now seems a good time. Please get comfy and tell us a little about yourself.
Hi, Lynn. I'm happy to be here.
A little about myself?
I'm a storyteller – first and foremost. I grew up in Northern Ontario, raised by my grandparents, and came to Nova Scotia when I was seventeen years old to get to know my Mom. I fell in love with the Atlantic Ocean from the first time I saw it and have lived here ever since – although I have hitchhiked across Canada a couple of times.
When did you first know you wanted to be a writer? Who or what inspired you?
The problem with a writer's memory is it is a bit of a stew pot, in that has been constantly stirred. Trying to pinpoint a memory like that is a little like trying to hunt up my favourite chunk of carrot from somewhere within the middle of the pot. I do remember sending a story to Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine – back when I was eleven years old. I received an actual hand-written rejection letter – because I believe some slush reader had kids of their own.
I also remember the morning that W.O. Mitchell – author of Jake and the Kid and Who Has Seen The Wind – came to our English class as a guest author. I'd say right then and right there I decided to myself that I was going to grow up someday and become an author.
I'm still working on that whole "growing up" part of the equation…
Well, don't worry, Steve; growing up doesn't seem to be all it's cracked up to be (although I still have a long way to go myself). As a writer, do you do much reading? Who were/are your favourite authors or books?
I read every day.
As a writer, I have to.
Whenever someone comes to me and says – "I want to be a writer" – the first thing I ask them is – "What have you read?"
If they tell me – "Well, I'm not all that much of a reader" – I promptly punch them in the nose – or, if they know karate or are of any potential size I might just shoot them once or twice with a ball of high-caliber sarcasm.
Fact is – WRITERS NEED TO READ.
You can't a drive a car without gas.
You can't exhale without inhaling good air.
A fire needs good firewood.
Say it again – WRITERS NEED TO READ.
My favourite authors include Stephen Hunter, Robert Parker, Brian Keene, Joe Lansdale, Bernard Cornwell, Gary Paulsen and Conn Iggulden.
I agree about the reading. Have you ever felt like giving up? When did you finally believe in yourself so you can say "I am a writer"?
For me, giving up has always been an exercise in futility.
The fact is – no matter what I tell myself – sooner or later I find myself sitting down and making up a story. I am a born storyteller – it is something that is genetic in me. So saying that I'm depressed and that life isn't worthwhile and that I'm going to quit writing and storytelling is about as sensible as me saying that I'm going to quit breathing.
In fact – that's another one of my rules for determining if someone is a writer or not. If they are driven to do this – to string words together and convey ideas upon the computer screen or a piece of paper – then they are most likely supposed to be some sort of a writer.
It's like a fellow who wants to be a painter. Odds are – if he is any kind of visual artist at all – he will have already established a LONG career of doodling and crayon coloring.
Writing – for me – is a natural obsession.
I'll give it up on the day that they dump about thirty or forty shovels full of dirt on my box.
Then we can expect many more books from you. 🙂 Do you have a motto or Bible verse or quote that you try to live by and that helps to keep you going?
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
And if anyone out there can't peg that quote then you really need to make time to read a few more books.
I'm glad to say I recognize those words. 🙂 What do you remember about your very first time to be published, how did that happen?
First story I sold was to a biker magazine – "OUTLAW BIKER". They paid $150.00 and a contributor's copy – a magazine with more breasts, beards and motorbikes than I had ever seen together at any one time.
Now back then – in the mid-eighties – that size of a check was about the same as I got paid for several days of flipping hamburgers at a fast food joint – where I was working at the time. So I remember thinking to myself – "Wow, I'm going to be rich."
It didn't work out quite as easily as that.
Interesting start! What have you had published thus far? Of those, what do you most enjoy writing?
I could fill a book with everything that I have written. I've sold close to a hundred short stories. I've got seven regional books out through Nimbus Publishing – (Haunted Harbours: Ghost Stories of Old Nova Scotia, Wicked Woods: Ghost Stories of Old New Brunswick among others). I've released about thirteen e-books through Crossroad Press. I have also released eight e-books independently.
Besides that I have written – and sold – about one hundred fifty book reviews. I have written and sold about a hundred poems. I have written and sold several dozen author interviews. I have written and sold a couple dozen articles and have written and sold one radio play.
I like to keep busy.
Which do I enjoy the most?
Well – I really DO enjoy the work that I get paid for an awful lot. There is a real satisfaction in receiving an actual cheque in the mail for my words.
I could also tell you that I ALWAYS enjoy the work that I am doing at any point in time. Whatever story, novella, novel or script that I am working on – that is the one that I love the most.
However – if I really had to be pinned down to one particular work – I would have to say that Sinking Deeper OR My awesome brilliant Questionable Heroic Decision to Invent a Sea Monster was my absolute favourite work. I really enjoyed creating that young adult novel.
You are a very prolific writer! What process do you go through when writing and perfecting a book or article?
There are two processes that I can tell you about.
The first is the ideal process.
The ideal process consists of writing a manuscript and then putting it away for the next month while I work on something else. Then – after the manuscript has suitably cooled down and I have had enough of a chance to fall out of love with each little turn and twist of phrase and every single plot entanglement – I stomp through it with an eye for continuity and entertainment value.
I sometimes end up rattling something off at the very last minute, running my eyeball over the computer screen to see if anything TOO obnoxious happens to stick out, and then throwing it between two pieces of cardstock and calling it a book.
My usual procedure falls somewhere in between those two schools of thought.
What method do you use to keep track of your writing ideas?
I scribble them somewhere, put it under a likely looking heap on my desk and then forget about it. Years later, usually around the January resolution-making season, I stumble across that scribbled note while making an entirely-too perfunctory attempt to clean up this sorry landfill that I call a desk – and I think to myself – "Hey, that would probably make a pretty good story."
Then I most likely will put that note back under another heap of scrap paper to mature a little longer.
It is – in hindsight – sort of a compost-heap approach to writing.
Funny! 🙂 What inspired you to write Sinking Deeper OR My
awesome brilliant Questionable Heroic Decision to Invent a Sea Monster?
That's an easy question.
Let's see if I can make the answer a little more confusing than it needs to be.
For starters – I wrote that novel because I REALLY wanted to write something for all of the kids that I visit through the WRITERS IN THE SCHOOL program. My ghost story collections are VERY popular amongst junior high and high school students – but I REALLY wanted to come up with an actual chapter-by-chapter novel for that age group.
So I came up with Sinking Deeper OR My awesome brilliant Questionable Heroic Decision to Invent a Sea Monster.
If you want me to get philosophical about it – the book is actually my ode to the oral storytelling tradition. Granddad Angus is sort of a role model for myself – the kind of storyteller that I would like to grow up to become – assuming I ever get around to actually growing up.
I am VERY proud of this particular novel – especially now that it has made the shortlist of BOTH the Hackmatack and the Silver Birch award. That is an awesome achievement for a writer who really did not know what he was doing at the time that he did it.
You have good reason to be proud of this novel. It looks as if you might have had fun writing this book. How long did it take you to write it? Did you have to do any research?
I had a lot of fun writing this book.
Research was minimal. I had spent a couple of years – off and on – living in the town of Yarmouth. I worked in a fish plant, raked blueberries, worked in a cotton mill and indulged in all manner of small town activity. I woke to bagpipes every morning of the two years that I spent attending Kings College University. I even threw a caber quite a few summers back. Dropped it to a reasonable eleven o'clock position – which isn't too shabby for a beginning caber chucker.
As for the sea monster – well, I had been thinking about that particular idea since I was a kid.
Did you write a little of yourself into any of the characters? Do you have a favourite?
I'd have to say that I want to be Granddad Angus – and I probably was Roland – as a child growing up.
Did you find any part of the story difficult to pull together? If so, how did you stick with it?
Writing for kids is HARD work.
Don't let ANYONE tell you that writing for children is easy.
I put more sweat into the creation of that novel SINKING DEEPER and the writing of my children's picture book MARITIME MONSTERS than ANY of my other works.
I stuck with it because I have bills to pay. If in doubt I ALWAYS apply a working man's ethic to my craft. My muse wears work boots and punches that time clock like it was a religion.
That sounds productive. How did you go about finding a publisher?
Well – I've got several publishers – but I'd have to say the publisher that has done the MOST to help make me the writer I am today is Nimbus Publishing. I connected with them on my very first ghost story collection – way back in 2004 – when I pitched my book at the First Annual Halifax Word on the Street Pitch the Publisher's event.
Pitch the Publisher was basically a sort of Dragon's Den for writers. You are given a very few moments to tell three different maritime publishers about your book – and WHY they ought to publish it. The event has gone on every year since 2004 – but as far as I have been told my book Halifax Haunts: Ghost Stories from Old Nova Scotia was the very first book to actually make the leap from a pitch session to a published work.
The book remains my bestselling work – with over ten thousand copies sold to date – which isn't all that bad for a Canadian regional press.
Fantastic! Tell us what honours this book (Sinking Deeper) has received thus far and what is coming up.
As I mentioned – the book has made the short list for both the Hackmatack and the Silver Birch awards for Children's Fiction. There is no cash prize involved – but both award committees have made certain that copies of Sinking Deeper have been bought and placed in school libraries across the maritimes and Ontario. That – in itself – is a huge benefit – and I am exceedingly grateful for this opportunity.
As a result I will be taking part in school and library readings across the maritimes – and possibly a few in Ontario – although transportation is an issue. I will be appearing at the OLA Conference this year – at the Follett Table on February 1st – at 11:30am. Any of you writer-types or librarians attending I'd be happy to meet with you.
I hope someone reading this can take you up on the invitation. Congratulations on making the short lists! Do you have another job you go to daily? If so, how do you find time to write when you are busy with life?
Oh yes – I have a day job.
It pays the bills.
As to how I find the time to write – I get up early and drink a LOT of coffee.
What other interests do you have for a change from writing?
I garden a little, shovel snow – (hey, it's Canada) – and work out a little. I read and I watch WAY too many old movies thanks to the Turner Network.
Fortunately we don't have snow all year! I understand about old movies; I like the Turner Network, too. How do you consistently write? Do you have writing goals – daily? Weekly? Monthly? Long range?
Writing goals have unfortunately been relegated to the realm of forgotten New Year's resolutions.
I write as often as I can – as well as I can – not nearly often enough.
And yet you are an accomplished author. Do you have another project in the works? Any hints you can share with our readers about that?
I'm currently working on completing a young adult serial/series that is available in Kindle and Kobo format. The work is entitled Flash Virus and it consists of six separate episodes that will eventually form a stand-alone book. I am currently halfway through Episode Five. The first episode is free – in both Kindle and Kobo – and I have given away about 8-10 thousand copies through both networks.
It's basically the end-of-the-world as told by a teenager.
The protagonist – Briar Gamble – has to react when his school is "invaded" by evil cellphones and a creepy pale-faced mad genius whom the kids refer to as Captain Albino.
You want a taste of it – here's the first sentence.
"So as near as I could tell the end of the world began roughly about the time that Billy Carver's butt rang – about halfway through the War of 1812."
Eight to ten thousand free copies? Wow! (I am reading one of those.) And that first sentence is a good hook. 🙂 Finally, do you have any advice for hopefuls?
Read every day – not just what you like to read – but read other stuff as well. Read action novels, political tomes, fairy tales, ghost stories, historical yarns, romance novels.
Feed the fire.
Grow yourself an iron-hard rhinoceros hide. This is NOT a profession for the easily discouraged.
Explore your imagination.
Don't forget to tell a story.
Beginning, middle, end – save the artistic timelines for Quentin Tarrantino and the like.
Don't give up the day job and remember to have fun.
If all else fails, go and fly a kite.
Great advice! Thank you, Steve, for this enjoyable and informative interview. You certainly gave us a different slant on things. 🙂
Now for the giveaway: Are you interested in winning a copy of Steve Vernon's YA novel – "Sinking Deeper OR My
awesome brilliant Questionable Heroic Decision to Invent a Sea Monster"? Please leave a comment about this interview for your chance to win. At 6 PM EST on Tuesday, February 5, one name will be pulled from the basket and I will contact the winner for a mailing address so Steve can send the winner a book! Be sure to check back.
Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂


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'Citizen Kane' at 70: The Legacy of the Film and Its Director
As the anniversary of the premiere approaches, a look at how the movie changed the industry—and what happened to Orson Welles in the years that followed
"There's only one person in the world who's going to decide what I'm going to do and that's me." – Charles Foster Kane
On the film's debut in 1941, the New York Times acknowledged that Citizen Kane was "one of the great (if not the greatest) motion pictures of all time." The paper hedged its bets, however, adding that "it was riding the crest of perhaps the most provocative publicity wave ever to float a motion picture," and that this "pre-ordered a mental attitude." The whirlwind surrounding the making of Citizen Kane is well known. Orson Welles, the brash prodigy of stage and radio, earned the envy and scorn of Hollywood veterans by striding onto the RKO lot with an unprecedented contract awarding him a three-picture deal, a massive budget, and the final cut of his first film—the Holy Grail of filmmaking. The controversial subject of his cinematic debut riled one of the most powerful men in the world, and upset the delicate balance of the studio system. Orson Welles earned every drop of ink written about his impending career in film.
Seventy years later, however, it's clear that the New York Times need not have qualified its glowing review. As Times film critic A.O. Scott recently remarked, "Citizen Kane shows Welles to be a master of genre. It's a newspaper comedy, a domestic melodrama, a gothic romance, and a historical epic." And it is still considered the best film ever made. In 1998, the American Film Institute polled 1,500 film professionals. The result was "100 Years... 100 Movies," and Orson Welles's masterpiece lorded over the list. Ten years later, the AFI commissioned another poll. Citizen Kane retained the top spot. As noted by the late, influential critic Kenneth Tynan, "Nobody who saw Citizen Kane at an impressionable age will ever forget the experience; overnight, the American cinema had acquired an adult vocabulary, a dictionary instead of a phrase book for illiterates."
The contract that gave birth to Citizen Kane was an unthinkable gamble by RKO, but the studio had good reason to bet on Orson Welles. At 20, he lorded over Broadway, first with Voodoo Macbeth, a reworking of the "Scottish play" set in the Caribbean and starring an all-African American cast. He followed triumphant reviews by establishing the Mercury Theatre and rewriting Julius Caesar, setting it in Mussolini's Italy. The curtain rose to universal acclaim. In a 1938 cover story, Time magazine wrote of Welles, "If the career of the Mercury Theatre, which next week will be six months old, seems amazing, the career of Orson Welles, who this week is 23, is no less so. Were Welles's 23 years set forth in fiction form, any self-respecting critic would damn the story as too implausible for serious consideration."
Already a radio star, Welles brought the Mercury cast and crew to CBS and founded Mercury Theater on the Air. The radio show pushed the boundaries of the format, but would explode into the national conversation after its infamous production of The War of the Worlds. Presented without commercial interruption and carefully plotted to catch radio listeners tuning the dial, it was performed as a straight news broadcast. Each "news" segment ladled tension and gravity over the airwaves, reporting peculiar lights in space that culminated in a full-scale Martian invasion.
Welles expected fallout, and he got it. And with it, the keys to Hollywood, or as he described it, "the biggest electric train set a boy ever had." Audacity and genius his trademark, and with a third medium to conquer and transform, Welles didn't think small. With the Mercury players in tow, he enlisted veteran satirist and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. Together they crafted a story that began with the death of an enigmatic protagonist, and explored his life through flashbacks told from multiple points of view. As questions are answered, questions are raised. The script ultimately compares a man's life to a jigsaw puzzle missing pieces, and thus impossible to solve. The writers very loosely based the title character of Charles Foster Kane on William Randolph Hearst, thus incurring the newspaper titan's wrath. Welles, Mercury, RKO, and the studio heads endured journalistic scandalmongering, and the film eventually earned a blacklist. Welles would later remark, "If Hearst isn't rightfully careful, I'm going to make a film that's really based on his life."
By coincidence, as related by Welles in his autobiography, he once found himself alone in an elevator with Hearst. It was the night of Citizen Kane's San Francisco premiere, and Welles invited him to the opening. "He didn't answer. And as he was getting off at his floor, I said, 'Charles Foster Kane would have accepted.'"
If the unconventional narrative style of the film transformed screenwriting, it is the technical detail of Citizen Kane that has overwhelmed the senses of audiences for seven decades. Gregg Toland was considered to be the best cinematographer in the world at the time, and showed up at Mercury's office one day. "My name's Toland," he is reported to have said, "and I want you to use me on your picture." By way of explanation, Toland added, "I want to work with somebody who never made a movie."
Welles called Toland "the greatest gift any director—young or old—could ever, ever have," and said, "I was calling for things only a beginner would have been ignorant enough to to think anybody could ever do, and there he was, doing them."
Citizen Kane is perhaps most studied for its use of deep-focus photography, wherein the entire frame remains in focus at all time. This technique challenges audiences to search the screen for crucial pieces of the puzzle, and allows for cinematic sleight of hand. An otherwise ordinary fireplace, for example, is a background piece in Kane's mansion. It's not until Kane steps next to it that its massive size is revealed, and Kane's captivity to his outsized riches fully expressed. In another scene, when Kane loses control of his media empire, he dominates the frame, signing away his holdings while claiming a moral superiority to his new corporate masters. He then turns and walks to a window at the far end of the room, and is visually diminished. Through deep focus, the camera captures the magnitude of Kane's defeat without a single word spoken.
Yet for all its renown, for all its acclaim, for all its influence, Welles would never again "ride the crest" of greatness in Hollywood. His follow-up project, The Magnificent Ambersons, was butchered by the studio, the result of unfavorable test screenings and a loophole in Welles's contract. (Though Welles would disown the film and its altered "happy" ending, it is still considered one of the great works of American cinema.) Though sheer force of personality, Welles likely would have prevailed over the studio hands carving away at his baby. But immediately after submitting his final cut, Welles departed to Brazil to film It's All True, a documentary commissioned by the U.S. government's Good Neighbor Policy as part of the war effort.
According to Orson Welles scholar Lawrence French, It's All True was the "biggest mistake of [Welles's] life." He returned from Brazil and was fired by RKO for allegedly going over budget, and the same journalists who elevated Welles to the stratosphere pounced on his oversized personality. Though Welles would go on to helm twelve more features and contribute to dozens more (to say nothing of the literally hundreds of roles he performed as an actor) he never truly regained his cinematic luster. Critic David Thompson went so far as to call Welles a failed artist, which in Mr. French's view is absurd. "Look at the work he's done all these years. Even if he only made twelve films, they're twelve of the greatest films ever made."
Interestingly, Orson Welles never lost his personal connection with the general public. In a March 1967 Playboy interview, Kenneth Tynan notes, "At 51, he has long since joined the select group of international celebrities whose fame is self-sustaining, no matter how widely opinions of their work may vary, and no matter how much the work itself may fluctuate in quality." Tynan places Welles on a list that includes Chaplin, Ellington, Picasso, and Hemingway. And that fame seems only to have grown with time. A countless number of biographies have been written about him, and he's featured in hundreds of books. He has been portrayed on stage and in film—notably in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, but most recently in Richard Linklater's acclaimed Me and Orson Welles. Woody Allen described Welles as "the only American director." Jack White of the band The White Stripes considers Welles a hero, and wrote a song consisting entirely of lines from Citizen Kane. In a Mother Jones interview, television virtuoso Joss Whedon admitted to weeping at the news of Welles's death, lamenting that a "great genius had been trodden down," a man that had "shown such promise and not been allowed to speak." Television and radio personality Glenn Beck went so far as to name his media company Mercury Radio Arts in honor of Welles. Film critic Roger Ebert refers to Welles solemnly as "the Great Man."
Proof that Orson Welles has ascended from "filmmaker" to "immortal" can be found in the way his incomplete works are now treated. Sealed reels of The Merchant of Venice have been stolen, just as art thieves might snatch a Renoir. There is an ongoing war for the rights to several of Welles's pictures. Nobody expects to make any money from these films—they're incomplete at best, and many reels would disintegrate when exposed to air. These battles are about being the sole owner of art itself. Meanwhile, the Welles Archive at the Munich Film Museum houses scraps of films—mere shots, really—simply to be admired. There is a fair comparison to be made with the sketchbooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Just as his scribblings are considered priceless, so too are fleeting seconds of footage filmed by the American auteur.
At the same time, there are two parts of the Welles legacy that remain unresolved. His final film, The Other Side of the Wind, remains locked in a Parisian vault, the result of a bitter rights battle between Welles's partner, Oja Kodar, the Welles estate, Beatrice Welles, and—with typical Wellesian gusto—a relative of the Shah of Iran. Orson Welles left detailed notes on how the film is to be edited, and personally tapped director Peter Bogdanovich to complete it. Though rumors surface every year that the film might finally meet an audience, there's been no real progress in the unsettled legal matters. After 40 years, however, it's unclear how a completed film would be received. Stanley Kubrick handed in the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut one week before his death, and wild expectations resulted in a critical assault on the cerebral film. (It has since received a more positive artistic reevaluation.)
In the case of The Other Side of the Wind, even in his time Welles was never an easily accessible director. But according to Mr. French, "Its style predicts films like Natural Born Killers. It uses a frenetic editing technique, it has boldness in film stocks—going from black and white to color—and it has a lot of quick cutting and wild camera movements. If it would have come out in 1975, it would have been seen as very innovative." Having viewed a rough cut of the film, Mr. French notes, "It's quite an interesting film. It's not Citizen Kane, but if it's put together right, it will be very well received." One problem is that even if the rights issues are settled, people are afraid to touch the film. "Whoever puts it together will be blamed for ruining it."
Meanwhile, there are rumors of a pristine "Orson Welles cut" of The Magnificent Ambersons, unmolested by RKO and with the original ending. A long print of the film was sent to Welles in Brazil while he was filming It's All True. It is possible that it was preserved, but many, including Mr. French, suspect this is pure fantasy. It is, however, a tantalizing fantasy. That 70 years later, a film might exist that surpasses Citizen Kane as the greatest film ever made. And that it is directed by Orson Welles.


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MLB Cheat Sheets: RP Rankings
By Tim McLeod and RotoRob
Relief pitching is perhaps the most volatile position in all of Fantasy baseball. Today, your dude is closing games; tomorrow, he's relegated to mop-up innings in 17-4 games. Nowhere else is a player's value so contingent upon his use as it is in the bullpen. Already this year, we've seen tons of closers implode or get hurt, thereby thrusting others into instant Fantasy value.
1. Joe Nathan, Minnesota Twins: Nathan gave up more homers last season, but who cares? He enjoyed perhaps his finest season yet, and has been flawless so far this year, justifying his likely fifth round selection.
2. Jonathan Papelbon, Boston Red Sox: Papelbon's K/9 dropped and his ERA rose last season, yet thanks to his amazing command, he was able to set career highs in wins and saves. He's dominating as usual this season, and Boston is wisely being judicious with his workload in the early going.
3. Jonathan Broxton, Los Angeles Dodgers: Broxton's workload was reduced last season as he made the mid-season transition to closing. He had a few struggles, but it was more or less a seamless move that he's been ready for now for a while. In the early going in 2009, Broxton has been absolutely dominating and it looks like we're seeing his breakthrough year.
4. Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees: The Yanks have slightly reduced Rivera's workload in the past few years and that's worked very well as in 2008 he enjoyed one of his best seasons ever. In fact, the paltry .165 that opponents his against Mo was his career best. It's been more of the same so far this season as Rivera has justified his fifth round selection. This dude's 39 now? Whatever!
5. Francisco Rodriguez, New York Mets: Rodriguez had a season for the ages in 2008, breaking the saves record and parlaying that into a big money deal from the Mets, who so desperately needed a bullpen overhaul. He set the tone on Opening Day, and K-Rod has been untouchable since, although the back spasms are worrisome. The fact that he's got an almost equally gifted reliever setting him up in J.J. Putz should make life even easier for K-Rod in the NL.
6. Bobby Jenks, Chicago White Sox: Jenks enjoyed a third straight season of at least 30 saves last year, but his K/9 has been dropping like a stone along with his velocity and he was easier to hit. The hit rates keep going up, and frankly this is a situation we're a bit concerned about. In fact, we've already been touting Jenks' possible replacement. Jenks hasn't been employing his curve this season, and with his reduced velocity, that's spelling trouble.
7. Heath Bell, San Diego Padres: Bell allowed more dingers last year, and his results suffered to an extent. Of course, duplicating his brilliant 2007 would have been nearly impossible. With Trevor Hoffman gone, Bell has taken over as the closer in San Diego, a promotion that earned him 11th round draft status. The transition couldn't have gone better so far, as he's been flawless, quickly establishing himself as one of the best looking closers in the game.
8. Brian Fuentes, Los Angeles Angels: Fuentes earned his third 30-save season with the Rox last year, enjoying probably his finest campaign yet. He's become harder and harder to hit over the last few seasons, but he's getting cuffed around in the early going for the Angels in 2009. In fact, Scot Shields has already jumped in to earn a save, however he has been unable to take advantage of Fuentes' struggles, as he's struggling himself. Shockingly, the normally superb Halo pen is the AL's worst so far.
9. Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds: Cordero was a workhorse the Reds' pen last year, but I have concerns about his slipping K rates, rising hit rates and command issues that continue to get worse. So far, none of this has affected his bottom line results this season, but I worry whether Cordero will deliver 11th round value. Still, he's just the 11th pitcher to save 100 games in both leagues, an impressive feat worthy of recognition.
10. Frank Francisco, Texas Rangers: Francisco proved he was capable of closing down the stretch last season, and since he's taken over the job full-time this year, he's been absolutely unhittable, looking like a bargain as an 11th round pick. In fact, if this keeps up, you may see Francisco pitching in the All-Star Game in a few weeks.
11. Ryan Franklin, St. Louis Cardinals: Franklin was hurt by walks and homers last season – a truly deadly combination for any pitcher. But this season, he was in the mix of many as the potential Cardinal closer, and when Jason Motte was ineffective from the get-go, we called it right on Opening Day that Franklin would be a good pickup. And man, did we nail that one. He's dramatically upped his K rate and has been unhittable, racking up the 1-2-3 innings.
12. Trevor Hoffman, Milwaukee Brewers: Hoffman missed time last year, yet still managed a 13th 30-save season. He recently returned from another injury – a little of ahead of schedule, even – and took over the closer role, looking sharp in the process.
13. Joakim Soria, Kansas City Royals: Soria gave up more homers last year, but his bottom line results were unbelievable, and in fact, probably unsustainable. Make no mistake, however. This kid's for real, and I love the fact that despite getting touched up a bit this year, he was racking up the Ks in the early going before hitting the DL. Soria has truly arrived as a standout closer, and I expect him to be a big part of the Royal resurgence. Hopefully upon his return, his set-up men will do a better job of bridging the gap so he can get more saves.
14. Brad Lidge, Philadephia Phillies: Lidge was virtually unhittable last season, and while his rising walk total is worrisome, it never came back to haunt him as he was perfect in save opportunities, capping an incredible first year in Philly. However, his consecutive save streak has already been snapped this season, and he's been getting roughed up in the early going, not what you were hoping for from a closer you likely used a seventh round pick on.
15. Jose Valverde, Houston Astros: Valverde was more prone to the long ball and was more hittable last season, but he remains among the best in the biz. The homers continue to be a problem in the early going in 2009, and now he's dealing with injury issues that will keep him on the DL for another few weeks, but upon his return, I'd bank on another solid campaign from Valverde – especially considering he has the incentive of impending free agency looming.
16. Huston Street, Colorado Rockies: Street struggled out of the gate, losing his job. But when it appeared he had reclaimed the gig, we recommended him, and it was a great call as Street has been lights out since. Dramatically improved control and a much higher K rate have led to him being perfect in save chances so far.
17. Mike Gonzalez, Atlanta Braves: Gonzalez has dealt with injuries issues in recent seasons, returning from Tommy John surgery in June last year, so we'll excuse whatever rust showed. He's healthy now and looking better so far this season. Now if Gonzalez can just stay healthy…
18. Brian Wilson, San Francisco Giants: Wilson took over as full-time closer last season and had his struggles from time to time, but he looked very sharp in the early going before hitting more struggles this month. His strikeout rate has dipped since the start of the season, and that makes me concerned whether he will be worth that 11th round pick you spent on him.
19. Matt Capps, Pittsburgh Pirates: Capps missed time with a shoulder injury last season, so he wasn't as sharp despite massively improved control. He's already missed some time this year, and he's been downright awful this month after a superb start to the season. Despite Capps's struggles, the Pirate bullpen looks better and the team has been more competitive in the early going, so his job security has to be called into question – could Sean Burnett get a chance to close if Capps keeps faltering?
20. George Sherrill, Baltimore Orioles: Sherrill earned the closer role last season almost by default and didn't exactly wow anyone. This year, his K rate has dipped and he's been hit harder – especially by righties. However, given that his bottom line results have been better and Chris Ray is sucking, Sherrill's job is more secure lately than during Spring Training when we assumed he entered the season on borrowed time.
21. Chad Qualls, Arizona Diamondbacks: Qualls had a strong season as a set-up man, but the question of whether he could close or not was a valid one heading into this season. In fact, we weren't sure he was going to last the season in this role. So far this season Qualls has been more hittable, so the jury remains out on his long-term future as a closer.
22. Kevin Gregg, Chicago Cubs: Gregg has been responsible for turning many a Cub fan prematurely grey this season. While his control was bad last year, it's been even worse in 2009, only this year, it's coming back to haunt him. The saving grace for Gregg has been that his Ks are way up. He got on a bit of a roll earlier this month, leading us to speculate that he had solidified his grasp on the closer job, but then he promptly got shelled in his very next outing. Gregg is definitely not a sure thing, but his job remains safe for the time being.
23. Fernando Rodney, Detroit Tigers: Everyone expects Joel Zumaya to take over the Tiger closer job sooner rather than later, but Rodney has been impressive, converting every save chance he's had so far. The key to his turnaround has been massively improved control. Sure, Rodney's K/9 has dropped significantly as well, but he's never pitched with this good command. Still, the Tigers have options, so Rodney's probably on a short leash, making him a fine sell-high candidate.
24. Scott Downs, Toronto Blue Jays: When B.J. Ryan went down with an injury, Downs took over the closer job in Toronto, and he's taken the gig and run with it, already matching his save total from all of last season. Ryan's back now, but Downs, with his ridiculously good 11-to-1 K/BB ratio is still holding down the fort, and he really hasn't given the Jays any reason to make a change.
25. Kerry Wood, Cleveland Indians: Wood finally stayed healthy and enjoyed a fine first season as a closer. Now in Cleveland, he got off to a strong start, but has been touched up quite a but lately, and his control has been awful, leaving in question not only his job, but how much value he'll deliver as a ninth round pick.
26. Brad Ziegler, Oakland Athletics: Ziegler burst onto the scene last year, setting a new record for consecutive scoreless innings to start a career. This season, however, has been another story, despite the fact that Joey Devine's injury seemed to hand Ziegler the keys to the kingdom. He's striking out more batters, but is getting hit far too easily. In fact, his anything but overpowering fastball is among the easiest to hit among all major league pitchers. Ziegler is on the verge of losing his closer job – if he hasn't already.
27. Matt Lindstrom, Florida Marlins: Lindstrom, who came to the Marlins in a 2006 trade with the Mets, got touched up a bit more last year, but showed he could save games, so he earned the closer role this year. He's upped his strikeout rate and was superb in the early going, looking like he was well worth a 14th round pick. However, his control has been atrocious lately, so I'd be very worried that he'll soon be hitting the DL, or just losing his job outright.
28. David Aardsma, Seattle Mariners: Thanks to one of the most untouchable fastballs in the game and improved control this season, Aardsma has finally broken through and is at last delivering on his promise. When Brandon Morrow went down, Aardsma got his chance to close, and he's still playing the part since Morrow has returned. In fact, with a run of 11 straight scoreless outings (11 1/3 IP, 6 H, 6 BB, 15 K), Aardsma looks like he's locking down the gig.
29. Juan Cruz, Kansas City Royals: We recommended Cruz as the man once Soria got hurt for the Royals, but he hasn't exactly been a sure thing – struggling especially in May, and taking a serious pounding Thursday. Cruz is getting plenty of action this year, but what happened to his usually prodigious strikeout rate? Without the Ks, his results have slipped this season. With Soria out another couple of weeks, Cruz remains a source of saves; not necessarily a good source, but a source nonetheless.
30. LaTroy Hawkins, Houston Astros: We recommended picking up Hawkins once Valverde went down, and for the most part, he's been very effective this year, already earning the most saves he's had since 2005. But earlier this week, the cracks started to show, he's dealing with a hip woe and Hawkins only has the gig temporarily, as Valverde could be back as soon as next week.
Others to Consider
31. Joel Hanrahan, Washington Nationals: Hanrahan took over as the closer late last season and enjoyed a fine year. However, thanks to some trouble with lefties, he got cuffed around pretty good in the early going. Hanrahan's command has been sharp, though, and he's turned the corner and has look much more effective this month.
32. Jason Isringhausen, Tampa Bay Rays
33. Dan Wheeler, Tampa Bay Rays
34. Andrew Bailey, Oakland Athletics
35. B.J. Ryan, Toronto Blue Jays: Ryan returned from Tommy John surgery to enjoy a fine season last year, striking out a batter per inning. However, he experienced some serious control problems early this year, making us wonder if he was hurt. Sure enough, he was and landed on the DL less than two weeks later. He's been back for a couple of weeks and has been better, but hardly effective. Ryan clearly is not ready to regain the closer job right now.
36. Brandon Morrow, Seattle Mariners
37. Rafael Soriano, Atlanta Braves
38. J.J. Putz, New York Mets
39. Carlos Marmol, Chicago Cubs: Marmol was next to unhittable last year, although he did give up more homers than usual. Still, he was one of the top set-up men in the majors and was expected to take over as the Cub closer with Wood leaving town, something that had him being picked in the ninth round. Unfortunately, Gregg is getting most of the save chances in Chicago, and the fact that Marmol has already blown a couple of chances doesn't bode well. His overall results will continue to be restricted until he addresses that awful control.
40. C.J. Wilson, Texas Rangers
41. Troy Percival, Tampa Bay Rays: Percival stayed somewhat healthy (for him, anyways) last year, and enjoyed a nice comeback season. This year, he was healthy for the first few weeks, but his continuingly weakened command was really affecting his results. Now, shoulder tendonitis has cropped up, and there's talk that the 39-year-old may pack it in. I'd say at this point, the 14th round pick you used on him is in peril of becoming a waste.
42. Leo Nunez, Florida Marlins
43. Chris Perez, St. Louis Cardinals
44. Manny Corpas, Colorado Rockies: Corpas' strikeout rate dropped significantly last year, and he struggled accordingly. Somehow, he got the closer job back from an awful Huston Street, but pitched so pathetically that he handed it right back. Corpas' command has actually been quite good this season, but maybe he needs to be a bit wilder, because all his strikes are getting hammered. In fact, it's so bad that the Rox were talking about sending him down, although he has pitched marginally better this month.
45. John Grabow, Pittsburgh Pirates
46. Jason Motte, St. Louis Cardinals
47. Ryan Madson, Philadelphia Phillies
48. Joel Zumaya, Detroit Tigers
49. Jensen Lewis, Cleveland Indians
50. Jose Arredondo, Los Angles Angels
51. Chris Ray, Baltimore Orioles
52. Scot Shields, Los Angeles Angels
53. Carlos Villanueva, Milwaukee Brewers
54. Octavio Dotel, Chicago White Sox
55. Takashi Saito, Boston Red Sox
56. Grant Balfour, Tampa Bay Rays
57. Tony Pena, Arizona Diamondbacks
58. Santiago Casilla, Oakland Athletics
59. Hideki Okajima, Boston Red Sox
60. Scott Linebrink, Chicago White Sox
61. Justin Masterson, Boston Red Sox
62. Jeremy Affeldt, San Francisco Giants
63. Brian Bruney, New York Yankees
64. Manny Delcarmen, Boston Red Sox
65. Joe Nelson, Tampa Bay Rays
66. Todd Coffey, Milwaukee Brewers
67. Jose Mijares, Minnesota Twins
68. Ramon Troncoso, Los Angeles Dodgers
69. Edward Mujica, San Diego Padres
70. Ryan Perry, Detroit Tigers
71. Jason Frasor, Toronto Blue Jays
72. Miguel Batista, Seattle Mariners: Batista spent most of 2008 in the rotation, but was better as a reliever. However, he was far too hittable last season. This year, he's pitching exclusively out of the pen, and he's cut his hit rates, is keeping the ball in the park, and doing a very good job. When Brandon Morrow went on the DL, Batista took over as the top set-up man, but he does have closing experience. In fact, he saved a game early last season, and a rumoured trade to the Nats and their bullpen of disarray could see Batista installed as a closer again.
73. Jim Johnson, Baltimore Orioles
74. Brandon Lyon, Detroit Tigers: Lyon was way too hittable last season, and his results suffered accordingly. He's doing better in that department this year, but his truly awful command has resulted in even worse bottom line numbers. Last month, I thought Lyon might have a chance to emerge with some value, but he's been even worse since then, and currently only has value in AL-only leagues.
75. Jon Rauch, Arizona Diamondbacks
76. Ronald Belisario, Los Angeles Dodgers
77. David Weathers, Cincinnati Reds
78. Cory Wade, Los Angeles Dodgers
79. Matt Guerrier, Minnesota Twins
80. Merkin Valdez, San Francisco Giants
81. Kiko Calero, Florida Marlins
82. Matt Thornton, Chicago White Sox
83. Dan Meyer, Florida Marlins
84. Joe Beimel, Washington Nationals
85. Jason Bermann, Washington Nationals
86. Cla Meredith, San Diego Padres
87. Clay Condrey, Philadelphia Phillies
88. Chad Cordero, Seattle Mariners
Cheat Sheet Archives
Third Base
Designated Hitter
2009 Preseason
First Base
Second Base
2008 Preseason
Starting Pitcher
Relief Pitcher
Third base
Second base
First base
2007 Preseason


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Freshman Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey recently introduced a bill that would ban "the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses." After a collective brow-raise over such a bizarre proposal, Shortey told the Los Angeles Times he got the idea "while doing some research on the Internet."
So is there an issue with aborted fetuses ending up as foodstuffs? No. And there never has been.
Shortey's bill is a wild overstatement of the latest front in the anti-abortion fight, one being prosecuted on an obscure Oklahoma anti-abortion website that has been trying to organize a campaign to boycott PepsiCo because of a research contract it has with a company called Senomyx for beverage sweetener research that the anti-abortion activist charge involves using the HEK-293 cell line in laboratory tests. HEK-293 is a cell line developed in Holland in the early 1970s through the fusion of a kidney cell from an aborted fetus and a virus that immortalized the cells, or allowed them to keep replicating in a laboratory. "Senomyx does not provide ingredients to PepsiCo, nor do they manufacture PepsiCo products. Our work with Senomyx is focused on beverage sweetener research to help us reduce sugar in future global products," according to Pepsi.
But solving a problem is not the real goal of proposing a ban.
Shortey's bill sits squarely in a tradition of vilification that's existed longer than English, mass media, or even Christianity. It's the timeless Blood Libel: the blood drinking straw man who's been given different titles over the millennia. Not only do abortionists kill babies, the bill implies, they want us all to commit the most culturally repulsive of all offenses—cannibalism.
The first recorded Blood Libel is from 31 AD. It's told by two Jewish historians, who lived in the first century in then-Roman Alexandria, Egypt: Philo, in his account of Flaccus the Lieutenant-Governor of Egypt; and Flavius Josephus, in his work, "Against Apion."
Here's what these sources tell us: Apion was a skilled hyperbolist and Lieutenant-Governor Flaccus was a desperate politician who tried to avert Caligula's wrath.
Around 30 AD, Apion, a Graeco-Egyptian grammarian and writer, had spent a great deal of time spreading nasty snipes about the Jewish citizens of Alexandria. His motives for this pastime have been lost to history, but Apion claimed Jews worshiped weird gods and refused to have images of the emperor in their temples. Oh, and to make this all worse, he whispered to many a curious audience that the Jews had been led out of Egypt because they were lepers.
Apion created a narrative. He wrote that it was a part of Jewish law to kidnap a Greek once a year and fatten him up and taste his entrails. Jews were cannibals
Lieutenant-Governor Flaccus used the suspicions about the Jews as a wedge to curry favor with the new emperor. Since the Jews of Alexandria were against Caligula, Flaccus appointed himself as the guy to remedy the problem.
Thousands of Alexandrian Jews—men, women and children—were tortured and killed as a direct result of Apion's defamations, a pioneering set of slanders that have proved to have real staying power.
Propaganda depends on things sounding vaguely familiar, lending a veneer of credibility to false claims. This is also why repetition is a popular tactic to sway public opinion—the creation of familiarity, which is then mistaken for truth. The Jews are not the only group to have suffered from slander campaigns; they also have been waged against alleged witches, gypsies and many other outsiders, often with equally dire consequences.
In the 19th century, Catholics were a popular target of sharp and false tongues in the U.S. The most widely read book of that century here was Uncle Tom's Cabin. Also widely read was a memoir by a woman calling herself Maria Monk titled, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed, published in 1836. The book claimed to be the first-hand account of a former nun in a Quebec convent, and to provide an insider's view of Catholics. One of her claims was that there were libraries packed full of books and not one bible. Another allegation: Not only were the priests having sex with the nuns, the unsuspecting narrator had stumbled upon a room where the convent kept baby corpses. Yes, the Catholics, who already ceremonially drink the blood of their Savior, also were killers of babies. Piles of them. Because that way the illegitimate but baptized infants would ascend to heaven more rapidly—without any further sinning.
The book was a sensation—perhaps the most widely read book in America before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, according to Richard J. Hofstadter's seminal 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." And its tale was, of course, false. Even basic facts about the convent where "Monk" claimed to live were not true. The book was totally debunked—but not before it had burrowed into the popular imagination. Most of the century's immigrants, the 19th century underclass, were from Catholic countries, and any justification for scorning them was welcomed. The Nativist movement and the Know-Nothings thrived on anti-Catholic sentiment. And remember, the Klu Klux Klan was not just terrorizing black people in the south—they were also terrorizing Catholics.
An example closer to our own time was the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. That decade saw widespread allegations of very specific type of Satanic cult conspiracy which, in retrospect, had all the elements of a classic Blood Libel. On a 1988 ABC special, the channel's then-resident schlock hawk, Geraldo Rivera, did his utmost to enlighten the general public about something evangelicals had held true for years. "Estimates are that there are over one million Satanists in this country," Rivera declared in prime time. "The majority of them are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network. From small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and FBI attention to their Satanic ritual child abuse, child pornography and grisly Satanic murders. The odds are that this is happening in your town!"
The Satanic Panic was a whiplash from the cultural revolution of the 1970s, a cultural spasm that oddly united therapists and evangelicals. The Christian community had some self-proclaimed former Satanic Priests in their ranks dishing about all the children's blood they used to drink and the therapists had some new and "innovative" (read: questionable) ways to "recover memories" of being the victims of the Satanic conspiracy. Both schools took over a decade or two to completely discredit.
A 1989 study by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion published in the book Satanism in America: How the Devil Got Much More than his Due by Shawn Carlson, Gerald LaRue and others reported there were 33 organizations and 90 individuals who were actively promoting the Satanism scare. This was a conspiracy all right—just not the one depicted on talk shows with depressed-looking teenagers. Nevertheless, these Satan experts were not only on news programs and at conventions—they were teaching law enforcement seminars on how to spot and investigate Satanic crimes.
The Satanic Panic was barely mentioned in the recent release of the West Memphis Three, the three now thirty-somethings who have spent nearly 20 years in prison for little more than wearing black clothes in a small southern town in 1993. Three 8-year-old boys were murdered in May of that year. And because Jessie Misskelley, 17, Jason Baldwin, 16, and Damien Echols, 18, fit the profile of what was thought at the time to be a Satanist (as in someone who killed children for sport and listened to heavy metal), they were railroaded, found guilty and sentenced to life. Echols was sentenced to death. It took two decades and dozens of celebrities to get them out of jail. Blood libels are far reaching.
The point of rehearsing these historical episodes is this: When a junior senator from the same state that banned Sharia Law proposes to ban feeding Oklahomans aborted baby fetuses, it's not just some wacky guy in a square state being eccentric.
There is a long and storied global history of demonizing groups of people with whom you disagree by tarring them with the charge of cannibalism—tapping into one of humanity's deepest and most firmly held taboos. The consequences of such charges have often been deadly. Abortion service providers are already routinely harassed, threatened, shot at and even bombed. Casting them now as handmaidens to cannibalism is just the next extreme step in turning the decades-long effort to make them into pariahs.
This piece appeared originally at Skeptic.


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Teen's pizza-praising essay helps her get into Yale
Better ingredients. Better pizza. A better topic for a college admission essay?
A Tennessee teen is crediting Papa John's, or rather her love for their pizza, with getting her into an Ivy League school.
Carolina Williams took to Twitter to celebrate her acceptance, writing: "I just want Papa Johns to know that I wrote a college essay about how much I love to order their pizza and it got me into Yale."
Asked to write about what she loves to do, Williams told The Tennessean that her cheesy idea was "completely genuine."
"Honestly, I thought I should go with the first thing that popped into my head," she told the paper.
A Yale admissions officer admitted that the essay made her laugh and inspired her to give Papa John's a call for a pie.
How could an essay on pizza inspire such praise? Here is a taste:
"Accepting those warm cardboard boxes at my front door is second nature to me, but I will always love ordering pizza because of the way the eight slices of something so ordinary are able to evoke feelings of independence, consolation and joy."
Of course, her creative essay was just part of why she was accepted to such a prestigious school. Williams ranked in the top 10 of her graduating class. She will be the first in her family to attend college.
Williams celebrated her acceptance by tossing on a Yale t-shirt and dialing Papa John's.


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There Are Lots of Ways to Help Make Men and Women Truly Equal
International Women's Day was earlier this month, and I spent the week speaking to many different audiences, largely of women, from big corporations to a small community college. My impressions and take-aways over the course of the week provide a snapshot of the state of the movement toward genuine male-female equality in the U.S.
On Monday I spoke to the employees of Novartis at their New Jersey headquarters. A big turn-out, mostly women, but with a number of men who participated and asked questions. Novartis has many different flex policies, as many large corporations now do. But what was most interesting is that the application for flex-time is "reason-neutral." Employees must show that working flexibly would be good for them and good for the business, but they do not state any reason why they want flex-time. It could be to take care of children or elderly parents, or it could be because an employee simply works better at home part of the time. The great advantage here is that parents, mothers in particular, are not singled out and stigmatized. Just as many colleges have "need-blind admissions," corporations could move to "reason-neutral flexible work."
Monday evening I drove to the Raritan Valley Community College in North Branch, New Jersey, to speak to an audience of about 75 faculty and students. It was a lovely audience, with a group of about 20 women from the pioneer feminist generation, women in their mid-60s and up who were the vanguard of women in the workplace. They weren't breaking glass ceilings so much as forcing their way through the door, opening it for the rest of us to enter and thrive. From an era in which "woman" and "family" were essentially synonymous they were determined to create the choice of work.
A young faculty member at Raritan raised a point that I had not considered before. She asked about same-sex couples and their impact on the work-family movement. I replied that the rise of same-sex couples is very important for challenging the deep gender biases and stereotypes that we still contend with in allocating caregiving and breadwinning responsibilities in a heterosexual couple. In a couple of two men or two women it cannot automatically be the woman who becomes the primary caregiver for children or elderly parents. She agreed, but pointed out that for the couple itself, the absence of default roles (the man is the breadwinner; the woman is the caregiver) can be destabilizing and even disorienting. How to know who is doing enough? Where is the starting line and the benchmark against which "equal" can be measured?
Related Story
By Thursday I was in Chicago at an awards ceremony for the Womenetics POW Awards luncheon. Womenetics is an online set of tools and a suite of courses for empowering businesswomen. The POW awards (for purposeful women), went to nine extraordinary women from the larger Chicago community, all of whom had been chosen through a complex selection process that involved voting by their employees and managers. They included a neuroscientist, the CEO of an earth-moving company, the first lay president of a Dominican college who was also one of the youngest university presidents in the country, a very successful Hispanic entrepreneur, and an African-American executive vice president of a large banking firm who was also the board president of the National Girl Scouts.
In the conversation before the awards ceremony, the two awardees of color argued that many minority women they knew left their company jobs not due to a lack of ambition but because they could see that they would not be advanced up the traditional ladder. They said that for many such women, starting your own business is the only way to go. One of the CEOs present argued that women should be making the business case for flexibility, pointing out the advantages of retaining employees rather than having continually to train new people or even to bring current employees up to speed on specific projects. All these women were calmly confident that "when women are engaged, business improves; the family improves; the community improves." It's good for the country.
Friday morning found me at an event at the New York Times Center for HSBC. One of the panelists was Irene Dorner, the refreshingly down-to-earth and frank CEO of HSBC USA. She told stories from her time in the business over three decades: from 1985, when the only restroom that she could use in the entire Bank of England was the one adjacent to the Governor's office, to 2005, when her colleagues held an event in a London club that would not allow women into the bar. As she dryly pointed out, had she been excluded because of a disability or because of her religion, her partners would never even have considered holding an event in such a facility, but did not think that exclusion based on gender was a problem. The difference that 20 years made? She kept quiet in 1985, but in 2005 was perfectly willing to raise a fuss. And as CEO, she says that "business has to make it possible" for workers to pursue their careers and take care of their families at the same time.
Friday afternoon was Johnson and Johnson, another corporation with a wide array of flexible work-life policies but only woman on the Executive Committee. J&J has a robust women's employee network that operates across different locations in the U.S. and abroad and sponsors programming not only for women, but also to allow women to come together and support projects empowering women around the world. One of the announcements for International Women's Day was J&J's co-sponsorship of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In initiative; the company will be disseminating Lean In materials and encouraging Lean In circles. It was an interesting glimpse of the value of effective top-down organization with regard to rapid dissemination of both a message and a product. The women I saw were both excited and receptive.
The week culminated at South by Southwest, an invitation that to me was enormously exciting and actually gave me some street cred with my teenage sons. (On the other hand, I managed to fly back next to the actor Paul Rudd without knowing who he was, a parental transgression so uncool as to almost get me disowned when my sons found out. After three different flight attendants came up and said how much they liked his work, I at least had the sense to ask him who he was.) Jessica Coen of Jezebel interviewed me about work and family before some 300 people. True to the under-30 tech generation, the audience was at least a third guys, several of whom asked questions that were every bit as engaged on how to juggle work and family as those posed by women. Even more interesting, from my point of view, was a woman who asked how her husband could get back into the workforce after spending a number of years at home with their children. In subsequent discussions, several of my tech friends described families in which the wife is bringing home a steady paycheck at a "regular job" while the husband stays home tending both his kids and his start-up. I take that as a very promising sign.
So there you have it: a week's snapshot from the front-lines of the work-family debate. I answered countless questions about Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg along the way and fielded numerous expressions of frustration and disbelief that "we are still having this conversation 50 years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique." Still, overall I found women and a growing number of men engaged, energized, and convinced we can together turn all this talk into action.


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Miscellaneous 3. Berry's Waffle House menu. Refers to Cutlip's death. January 26, 1938. Petition to place Wewoka on ballot in election to relocate county seat. Back side has handwritten note concerning witnesses and cattle stock. 1920. Seminole Chamber of Commerce receipts and expenditures. 1935. Miscellaneous Booklets 4. "Constitution and By-laws of the Independent Oil Field Workers Association". December 5, 1934. "A Memorial to Washington the Mason, to be erected at Alexandria, Virginia". Alexandria-Washington Lodge, No. 22, A. F. & A. M. 4. 1920. Primary Election Law (Amended Senate Bill No. 168) and the General Election Law. Muskogee, OK: Muskogee Printing Co. 1908 "Second Section. F. C. Degree" (Masonic ritual). n.d. "The Seven Wonders of the World: The Most Impressive Things That Men Have Ever Done". New York: William H. Wise and Co. 1932. United States Code Annotated, Revenue Act, 1932. St. Paul: West Publishing Co. Untitled attack on the League for Industrial Democracy. [Possibly by I. V. Horner] 1935. 5. Oklahoma: Land of Opportunity by Lerona Rosamond Morris. Guthrie, OK: Co-operative Publishing Co. 2 copies. 1934. Periodicals 6. The Garden Club Exchange, Vol. 3, No. 6, Des Moines: Meredith Publishing Company. February 1932. Journal of the American Judicature Society, Vol. XVII, No. 2, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Article on pp. 56-57, "Where Lawyers Aid Court as Triers of Fact," concerns Cutlip. August 1933. The Gossip, Vol. 1, No. 24, Wewoka, OK. January 21, 1928.
The University of Oklahoma Libraries | 401 West Brooks Street, Norman, OK 73019 | (405)325-4142


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This is the 7th post in a series, for the previous post please click HERE.
The first thing that people ask me when I explain the New Covenant to them is:
"Wait…. does that mean its okay to lie, steal, and commit adultery?".
I think it's funny that everyone seems to wonder right off the bat if its okay to commit adultery. They will usually mix a few others in there for good measure but that seems to be the common denominator. The answer to that question is no, but I intend to justify this Biblically.
Right now I am going to take a moment to define some of the terms I am using with regards to the Law. I am not personally comfortable using these words as they are the same terms utilized by SDA. Understand though that when SDA use these words they define them differently.
Ceremonial: These are the laws and precepts of the Old Covenant that pointed to Christ, they had a specific function and were fulfilled on the cross. It should be noted that the term "ceremonial" is not actually found in the Bible. It is simply a man made word with which one can identify a category of laws seen in the Bible. One can discern which laws are ceremonial by cross referencing those taught in the old covenant with the new. If the law IS NOT taught prescriptively in the New Covenant it is a ceremonial law.
Moral: Moral laws are used to govern society, convict us of sin, and guide us in Christian living. They have no ceremonial function, they simply teach between right and wrong. One can discern which laws moral by cross referencing those taught int he old covenant with the new. If the law IS taught prescriptively in the New Covenant it is a moral law. Though, as with Ceremonial the Bible does not refer to the Moral law, it can certainly be seen taught as a separate entity from other "ceremonial" laws. I would argue that the Moral law is what Paul refers to as the "Law of Christ" (Gal 6:2)(1 Cor 9:20-22).
Before we can even establish these distinctions though we have to start from the ground up and prove how we even get there. It is not enough to just assert such classifications on the law without demonstrating a sound hermenuetic by which one arrives at them. So before I move on I am going to support the presuppositional thesis I am utilizing.
The Bible doesn't distinguish between the law of Moses and the Ten Commandments.
It actually refers to both interchangeably, this is key in understanding not only the falsehoods in SDA teaching but in formulating one's hermenuetic on the law. The Ten Commandments are so foundational to Christian tradition that it is easy for us laity to get confused. Tradition is important but it doesn't trump scripture. The fact of the matter is, the Ten Commandments received by Moses were a part of a whole at the time of receipt.
I make the case for this HERE. But the verses that I used to support the fact that the two are referred to interchangeably can be found in the following: (Luke 2:23-24) (1 Chr 16:40) (2 Chr 31:3) (Mrk 7:10) (Matt 15:4).
The Bible includes the Ten Commandments as part of the Old Covenant.
This is another one that is disconcerting to learn as an SDA but is none the less true. The laws of the Torah were not only a single unit but they were connected and along with the Old Covenant.
"And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone." Deut 4:13 ESV
"9 There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt…. 21 And there I have provided a place for the ark, in which is the covenant of the Lord that he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt." 1 Kings 8:9, 21
"1 Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness… 4 having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant." Heb 9:1,4 ESV
A New Covenant was Prophecied
"31 "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Jer 31:31-33 ESV
SDA that I share this with will be quick to point out that the Law is written on our hearts in this "New Covenant". And they are correct, the verse does say that. What an SDA will ignore completely is that it also says that the Old Covenant is "not like" the new. This would seem to be teaching us that the two covenants, law included as proven above, are not like each other. To assert that this verse instead says "same as" would be eisegesis.
We are in the New Covenant era today
We know that this isn't something we have to wait for now, this is because Jesus Christ initiated the New Covenant at the Last Supper. Most would take this thesis as a no brainer but I intend to prove everything from scripture.
"20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." Luke 22:20 ESV
The New Covenant made the Old Obsolete
"13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away." Heb 8:13 ESV
Here is the kicker, the old covenant, and associated laws are obsolete. The Bible makes this very clear, lest there be any confusion keep reading after Heb 8:13. Go all the way into the next chapter. You will see in Heb 9:1 the writer again clarifies that he is speaking of the old covenant and then in verse 4 he mentions the ten commandments as being a part of the old covenant. There is no escaping this as an SDA. In all the time I have spent chatting with SDA, Hebrew Roots, and other Sabbatarians not a single one has even been able to address this. They all kinda scatter or change the subject when you bring it up.
We still have Law today even though the Old Covenant, which included laws, is obsolete
This is obvious in many verses in the Bible, but the one that I want to focus on is 1 Cor 9:20-22.
"20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some." 1 Cor 9:20-22 ESV
Notice that Paul juxtaposes the "Law" associated with the Jews up and against the "Law of Christ" which he asserts that he is under. If there were no law he would have instead identified with those without the law, but he did not. If we were under the Torah he would have identified with those under the Torah. Instead he says that he becomes all things for the sake of the Gospel. I take it he is trying to reach everyone, and I praise the Lord that he did. But in the same breath the Law that he does identify with is the Law of Christ. If not the Torah, where do we find the law of Christ? What passage to we turn to so that we can see what is right and wrong?
The Law of Christ is found in the prescriptive teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles
As with most things I would emphasize the Pauline writings as they are the most systematic works found in the New Testament. That being the case Christ is certainly teaching Law in the gospels, especially in Matt 5, 6, and 7. How do we tell the difference between references to the Torah in the New Testament and the Law of Christ? Sometimes this is not always easy, you usually have to look at the context. But one of the nice things is that John is very consistent, when he uses the Greek word "Entole" to refer to the Law it is always in reference to the Law of Christ. When he uses "Nomos" to refer to the law it is to identify the Torah. This can be used to juxtapose the teachings regarding either against each other for clarification.
Sadly I do not recall who to credit this breakdown of "Nomos" and "Entole" in the writings of John. But for the sake of any of my readers I am posting it here. I found this from a pastor online and added it to my notes. I wish I could credit him properly.
"ἐντολή ("entole")– the New Covenant precepts, teachings and instructions of Jesus.
Of the nine occurrences of the noun ἐντολή ("entole") in John's Gospel, four refer to a "command" (John 10:18; 12:49–50) or "commands" (John 15:10b) given to Jesus by God the Father (cf. the use of the verb entellomai in 14:31). Five occurrences refer to a "command" (John 13:34; 15:12) or "commands" (John 14:15, 21; 15:10a) given by Jesus to his disciples (cf. the use of the verb in 15:14, 17). One occurrence refers to "orders" given by the Pharisees to inform them of Jesus' whereabouts (John 11:57). Nowhere in John is "entole" used to refer to the "commandments" of the Hebrew Scriptures. The term commandments in this sense is always called νόμος ("nomos")
"No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge ("entole") I have received from my Father." (John 10:18 ESV)
"Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders ("entole") that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him."(John 11:57 ESV).
"For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment ("entole") —what to say and what to speak." (John 12:49 ESV)
"And I know that his commandment ("entole") is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me." (John 12:50 ESV)
"A new commandment ("entole") I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." (John 13:34 ESV)
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments ("entole")." (John 14:15 ESV)
"Whoever has my commandments ("entole") and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." (John 14:21 ESV)
"If you keep my commandments ("entole"), you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments ("entole") and abide in his love." (John 15:10 ESV)
"This is my commandment ("entole"), that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command ("entole") you." (John 15:12-14 ESV)
"And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments ("entole"). Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments ("entole") is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected." (1 John 2:3-5 ESV)
"Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment ("entole"), but an old commandment ("entole") that you had from the beginning. The old commandment ("entole") is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment ("entole") that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining." (1 John 2:7-8 ESV)
"Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments ("entole") and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, ("entole") that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded ("entole") us. Whoever keeps his commandments ("entole") abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." (1 John 3:21-24 ESV)
"And this commandment ("entole") we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." (1 John 4:21 ESV)
"By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments ("entole"). For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments ("entole"). And his commandments ("entole") are not burdensome." (1 John 5:2-3 ESV)
"I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded ("entole") by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment ("entole"), but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments ("entole"); this is the commandment ("entole"), just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it." (2 John 1:4-6 ESV).
"Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments ("entole") of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea." (Revelation 12:17 ESV)
"Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments ("entole") of God and their faith in Jesus." (Revelation 14:12 ESV)"
Νόμους ("nomos") – the Old Covenant law.
John makes a clear distinction between the two words. For example, "For the law ("nomos") was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17 ESV). "Has not Moses given you the law ("nomos")? Yet none of you keeps the law ("nomos"). Why do you seek to kill me?" (John 7:19 ESV). When John writes of the New Testament laws he uses "entole". For example, "A new commandment ("entole") I give you, that you love one another, even as I loved you, that you also love one another" (John 13:34) "A new commandment ("entole") I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." (John 13:34 ESV). So when John says, "commandments" he never means the Ten Commandments, but always means the teachings of Jesus especially faith (John 14:1 & 1 John 3:23a) or love (John 13:34; 14:15; 15:12-17 & 1 John 3:23b). Further John underlines this by writing that we are to obey "his commandments" not just "the commandments" which shows that John was not referring to the Ten Commandments, but to the New Covenant teachings of Jesus, "his commandments".
John also records for us that we will be judged not by laws written on stone, but by the words of Jesus. "If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day." (John 12:47-48 ESV). Jesus never commanded Christians to keep the Sabbath and for good reason. He is our Sabbath rest. "Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
"For the law ("nomos") was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17 ESV)
"Philip found Nathanael and said to him, 'We have found him of whom Moses in the Law ("nomos") and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.'" (John 1:45 ESV)
"Has not Moses given you the law ("nomos")? Yet none of you keeps the law ("nomos"). Why do you seek to kill me?" (John 7:19 ESV)
"But this crowd that does not know the law ("nomos") is accursed." (John 7:49 ESV)
"Does our law ("nomos") judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?" (John 7:51 ESV)
Now in the Law ("nomos") Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" (John 8:5 ESV)
"In your Law ("nomos") it is written that the testimony of two people is true." (John 8:17 ESV)
"Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law ("nomos"), 'I said, you are gods'?" (John 10:34 ESV)
"So the crowd answered him, 'We have heard from the Law ("nomos") that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?'" (John 12:34 ESV)
"But the word that is written in their Law ("nomos") must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.'" (John 15:25 ESV)
"Pilate said to them, 'Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law ("nomos").' The Jews said to him, 'It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.'" (John 18:31 ESV)
"The Jews answered him, 'We have a law("nomos"), and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.'" (John 19:7 ESV)
Neither I John, II John, III John or the Book of Revelation use the term "nomos."
There is an obvious problem with what I have argued so far, and that is the implications one can take with it. Here is the thing, if the Law of Christ is a brand new set of laws hot off the shelf then that would imply that Christ fulfilled one law and gave us another.
While the New Covenant is different than the Old, the fact that cannot be ignored is that the laws that come associated with the New Covenant can also be found in the laws associated with the Old Covenant. Nine of the ten Commandments are actually an excellent example of this.
I. Acts 14:15 and I Corinthians 8:5, 6
II. I Corinthians 10:7, 14 & I John 5:21
III. Colossians 3:8
IV. None
V. Ephesians 6:2; Colossians 3:20
VI. Romans 13:9 ; I Peter 4:15
VII. Romans 7:2 ; I Corinthians 6:9
VIII. Romans 13:9 ; Ephesians 4:28
IX. Ephesians 4:25 ; Colossians 3:9
X. Romans 13:9 ; Hebrews 13:5
So how do we pull everything together so that this makes sense? Were there two sets of laws or just one?
The answer I believe, is that there has only ever been one set of Moral Laws. They have always been the Law of Christ. God simply issued them to us through an intermediary (Gal 3:19) along with Ceremonial Laws which pointed to Gospel.
In the Torah you have Law and Gospel in the make up of its 613 Laws. The gospel can be glimpsed at in types and shadows of animal sacrifices, Sabbath days, and other various laws that set apart the Nation of Israel as the people that would bring the Messiah to the world in their very lineage.
So in truth, we have the Torah even now. Yet the ceremonial functions are received in the person of Christ. Where as the Moral Law of Christ serves the same functions that it always has. Most notably, among other Biblical uses it stops the mouth of sinners to bring them to repentance.
"19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God." Romans 3:19 ESV
A Seventh-Day Adventist will usually assert that all of the Ten Commandments found as listed in Exodus 20 are the Moral Law of Christ. The problem with this is that if you subject the Ten Commandments to the same Moral vs Ceremonial test that you do all other laws found in the Torah you find this is not the case. Instead you find that 9 of the 10 Commandments are re-taught prescriptively by the Apostles after the Cross.
Examine the diagram above carefully. First notice that the Sabbath Day commandment is not found in the new testament. Some might reference places where the Sabbath is mentioned in conversation or in a descriptive fashion but it is never taught prescriptively. All of the other commandments of the Decalogue are taught prescriptively in the New Covenant.
Notice that some laws are taught prescriptively in the New Covenant, like those on sexual immorality, but the punishments that go along with them are not. I would advise you to do a read through of the Torah. You will find that the laws that are Ceremonial by this definition either set apart Israel from other nations or clearly pointed to Christ. An obvious example is the animal sacrificial system that was a type and shadow of its anti-type fulfillment, the one time sacrifice of Christ our true Passover Lamb.
All Sabbaths were ceremonial and pointed to Christ as well, not just the weekly Sabbath. For a full breakdown walk through focused on the Sabbath please click HERE.
All Moral Laws are defined in the Bible by Christ:
And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." Matt 22:37-40 ESV
In this next verse we can see that Paul actually defines the moral law more specifically. Paul chimes in on the same theme and calls it the "Law of Christ".
"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Gal 6:2 ESV
The point that cannot be made clear enough though is that the Sabbath day is simply a ceremonial law, it is not binding to New Covenant Christians. I realize Christian tradition on the Ten Commandments, especially in American Evangelical Christianity, makes it really hard to accept that one of the ten is obsolete. This is why it is important to rely on the word over and above the traditions of men (Mark 7:7).
If you are new to these theological concepts and would like a good pure teaching on what the Ten Commandments mean to a new covenant Christian I recommend reading Martin Luther's Small Catechism. They are cheap on amazon, but if you want to simply read it online you can find it free HERE. Keep in mind, he uses a different numbering of the 10 Commandments than you might be used to. The principals however are the same.


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One thing about having interior designer friends is you get a totally different perspective on building design and public spaces.
For instance, I had long ago succumbed to the fact that establishments in Singapore don't always have their own bathroom. You have to leave the premises to find a shared bathroom used by the building. While I find it a little off putting but just one of those quirks about living in Singapore, my interior designer friend was highly annoyed.
"How can an establishment this big NOT have a toilet?" moaned Lee.
"I don't know, but speaking of, can you tell me where the toilet is?" I answered.
She pointed me out the building and around the corner. While there, I snapped a photo of this.
I sent the photo to my friend in the US who has spent some time in Singapore and also finds these campaigns fascinating. As I have mentioned before, the number of campaigns in this country is staggering.
"Hrm… is that really a problem?" she asked.
"I guess so," I answered. "Otherwise there wouldn't be a campaign for it."
I shared the conversation with Lee and the other folks at the table and received back a unified "Yes, yes, YES. It is DEFINITELY a problem."
"There you go," I answered.
Here in Singapore, sometimes the loos are completely spotless, like at Changi Airport or the Zoo. At other times, not so much. It really shows you what an effort is put into keeping the clean ones clean. The next time I use the facilities at Changi Airport and am asked to rate my experience, I am giving the attendant full marks. It's not an easy job to keep the loos clean, and often a thankless one.