Free Speech Unique to America

A thought provoking and (for the moment) encouraging article about First Amendment rights in my country.

In other news: Beth had significant oral surgery earlier this week, and could use prayers, flowers, cards, et cetera.

Also, I'm involved in quite a lot of music (this isn't Easter or Christmas, is it?) and I'd love to tell you about it when I have a moment to write another post. The big ear-worm at the moment is Puccini's Messa di Gloria: beautiful stuff.

PBA Begins

We're sitting in the church, and listening as Elder Dodge organizes this mammoth event. The numbers this year are staggering: it looks like 45 teams made it to the finals this year! This doesn't reach the proportions I had hoped for: see the opening paragraph at PBAWiki.org. But it is very easily the largest group in the four years that the Triadalphia Sparks have been here.

About half of the pews in the church have been allocated to the 45 teams. Each team comprises six (typically) Pathfinders, and is assigned an adult local judge and scorekeeper. Each team also has a runner, usually an Adventurer or similarly-aged youngster, and the runners were assigned this year by calling all eligible kids to the front, and then directing them to each go find one of the local judges, who were standing until they connected with a runner.

This is the first year that the local judges have been asked to check the uniforms for completeness. According to the rules any participants who are lacking parts of the official uniform are to be disqualified, but this is the first year that the inspection has occurred during the orientation.

A little more rigor this year with respect to who may walk around and take pictures during the event. Official photos are to be posted on the PathfinderBibleAchievement.org website within three weeks.

As always, the scoring is based on the highest-achieving team. Any team that reaches 90% of that score is considered to have a first-place finish, 80% second place, and the remainder third place. My personal prayer as we go into this event is for 45 first-place finishes. God is able to grant this if it brings glory to His name.

Because of the way these events are conducted, we will not have an accurate picture of how the kids are doing until the end, when the scores are announced. At the half-way point, we'll get a few minutes to chat with the players, and we can get a feel then for how they think they are doing.

Opening prayer . . . and they're off. :-)

If you've been following along, it will be 45 questions (I expect) before I have much more to report. Take the time to shoot me an e-mail, please, so I can tell the kids at half-time about all the people who are praying for them.

Note to the organizers for next year: take steps to ensure that the cameras and cranes are removed from the sanctuary before the event next year, so that all the teams have a good view of the screens.

This year our team wound up on the opposite side of the sanctuary from where we chose to sit. We could have tried to move closer, but it didn't seem worthwhile at the time. But I'm finding it even more difficult than usual to get a sense of how our team is doing or feeling.


The yellow sign in the center is for our team.

45 questions, time for the half-way point stretch.

Well, the news is not the unburnished enthusiasm we have been praying for. Because the team is short by one player, there are five chapters that have had less polish than the others, and one eight-point question came from those chapters.

One of the astonishing features of this year's event is that the judges (we assume) have selected questions to remove preemptively. So far five of the questions, now six questions, now seven, now eight, have been removed from the event. This significantly reduced the potential score and the opportunity for teams from behind to make up their scores. Now nine. We are told this is for the sake of time.

We're waiting for the teams to finish writing the 90th (last) question, which was the list of generations between the captivity and Jesus.

According to our record keeping, there should be a total of either 191 points or 198 points.

Uncle Dan from Your Story Hour is here to say a few words.

I gave an announcement about PBAWiki.org.

There's announcement that Battle Creek will be hosting a Pathfinder museum.

I haven't forgotten about you. The score tallying is taking a very long team, and our emcee is continuing to discourse on many topics as we wait for the score to be returned.

The scores have been returned. We should be hearing something momentarily.

We have the scores now. This is not official, but my count as they were handed out was that 40 of the 45 teams scored a first-place finish, and the remaining five were all second place. This is a very close finish, and an amazing number of very high scores. The Triadelphia Sparks suffered from the missing member, and wound up with one of those 2nd-place finishes.

Closing song and benediction, and we hurry for supper and the train.

Pathfinder Bible Achievement '08

It's been a month and 4 days since my last post: sorry to be so incommunicative, but that's really representative of my emotional state, I suppose. But in some areas I'm feeling like life is getting back to normal, and some schedules just refuse to wait for me, so I have to catch up and handle them as they come.

One of those is Pathfinder Bible Achievement, sometimes known by the older term Bible Bowl. This is the fourth year that my kids have made it to the national event, and we're here in Michigan now, resting up in our hotel and studying the gospel according to Matthew.

In years past I have tried to post to my weblog during the event itself, so that you can stay up to date as events happen. I'm not sure if I'll do that again this year, but if not, I plan to at least update my Twitter status. So keep an eye on that if you're not seeing new data here.

Thank you for all your prayers and warm wishes. The kids are excited, and even though their team is short one player, I believe they have a good chance of scoring in the top 10%, i.e. a first place finish.

As you may know, this years material is the gospel according to Matthew, and you can visit Matthewpedia.com and download the study questions there to get an idea of what these kids are facing. I've also registered the domain name PBAWiki.org to point to the same site, as a more all-encompassing term for future years.

I Am a Walking Death Sentence

At least I understand now why I feel like someone punched me in the stomach and lower back, both, but only on my left side.

That little scamp, the zoster virus, decided to wake up and give me the shingles. You can check the Wikipedia article for all the whys and wherefores.

The good news is that this seems to be a mild case (not much headache or fever, and only mild malaise), and that we're catching it pretty early. (The blisters came on only last night, I think.) I'm facing some pain and itching, but I'll probably make a good recovery. And I'm statistically unlikely to face this a second time.

The bad news is that there is no certainty that I will be non-contagious before Easter.

Without this impediment, this is what my schedule would have looked like:

• Tomorrow: church, followed by the conference-level Pathfinder Bible Achievement event
• Sunday: church (2 services x 2 anthems), and the Montgomery Philharmonic concert in the evening
• Monday: potential orchestra open board meeting
• Tuesday: ACMP string quartet reading session
  
• Wednesday: Big, final dress rehearsal with both Rockville and Bowie choirs and five string players
  
• Thursday: Maundy Thursday service (1 anthem)
  
• Friday: Good Friday service (Bach's Cantata #4 with strings, and other beautiful music)
• Next Sabbath: church, and Easter Vigil service in Bowie repeating music from Friday
• Next Sunday: church (2 services x 2 anthems with brass)

This contagion is serious for anyone with a compromised immune system. That would include anyone with AIDS or undergoing chemotherapy, for example. It's also a significant risk for people over the age of 60, at which point postherpetic neuralgia is more of a problem.

The doctor was very emphatic that I am not to participate in the above activities until I reach the stages of non-contagiousness. And that will probably be sometime in the next 3 to 14 days. He said that I could be conducting at the Kennedy Center (I liked that bit) and an immunocompromised person in the balconey would be at risk of catching this from me, and dying. Then he shooed me out the back door of his office.

So, I solicit your prayers. God knows about everything that has been on my plate. He knows how quickly He plans to heal me, which events I will be healthy enough to help with, and who He has prepared to step up and take over while I'm absent. Please pray that He will work this all out exactly as suits His purposes.

Quartet Reading Session #3

Last night was the third get-together of our ACMP-connected string quartet, just reading for fun, and in spite of the icy roads, all five of us eventually showed up. Yes, five, because our coordinator and founder had suggested reading quintets this time, and had invited another violin/viola player.

When I arrived, the other three players from last month were already working on a Mozart trio. I enjoyed the sounds of music wafting from the house as I slipped my way up the icy driveway. We jumped into the first three movements of Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet (D minor) while waiting for our fifth player. We had read this at the end of January's session, but only the first and third movement, I think, and I had been playing viola. This time I was reading first violin.

Towards the end of the third movement our new friend arrived, and I switched to second cello for Schubert's great C Major quintet. This was a big thrill for me, as I know the piece well, but had never played a cello part before. For the final movement, the other cellist offered to trade instruments with me. I was embarrassed to have him play my beginner-model cello (he's an incredible cellist), and worried that I would do damage to his. But I also wasn't going to let this opportunity flit by. It's difficult to express how rewarding that was!

We finished the evening with Mozart's K 516 G minor quintet for two violas, and I switched back to first violin. I think that none of us noticed until the end that we had run 45 minutes longer than planned.

Playing chamber music is usually a positive experience for me, but this evening was unusually rewarding. I can hardly wait for next month's session.

How to Fight Evil

Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it. -Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948)

Pathfinder Bible Achievement 2008

Today is the first official Bible Bowl event for 2008.  For our area (and a neighbouring area), the event is being held at New Hope church in Fulton, MD.  We're up to question 32 (out of 90).  I'll update this blog post later, when we know the results.

** Halfway point now . . . time for a break

** All the questions have been asked now. It's chaos and pandemonium as we wait for the official scores to be announced. Already word-of-mouth is that our team set the bar a bit below 90%.

** It's official now: Triadelphia and one other team are going on from this area.

Well, that was nice. :-) I got a nice mention and round of applause for having kicked-off the Matthewpedia.com website. I was already planning to continue the website with a new domain registration for next year, and I would love to see it grow into a rich study resource with material renewed for each year.

Montgomery Philharmonic

Just a quick dump of something that's on my mind today: Early in January I began playing violin with the Montgomery Philharmonic, a community symphony based in nearby Gaithersburg. I was initially hoping for a group that would push my abilities, perhaps even something approaching the minor-league professional orchestras, such as the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra, where I played for ten years.

While this fledgling ensemble has not yet attained to those standards, I realized that this orchestra could well meet my family's needs. They need players in the string bass section, and part of the mission of the group is to introduce students to orchestra playing.

So we will be attending the next rehearsal as a family, and 75% of the family will be experiencing their first orchestra rehearsal beyond CMW.

Music Making

I was recently contacted by a fellow member of the ACMP. She was looking for a quartet to get together for sight-reading about once a month. Last night we got together for the first time, and spent about two hours playing.

It was an A-minor evening. We read through Brahms No. 2, Op. 51, Mendelssohn No. 2, Op. 13, and the first two movements of Schubert's "Rosamunde", D 804 (op. 29). It was double fun for me, because I got to play cello!

On an unrelated note, I request your prayers for Cindi, a dear friend of ours and Vicki's matron of honor, who this morning is undergoing her third surgery for breast cancer in about as many weeks.

Postcards for a One-Room School

I've been sitting on this for a couple of months, but we finally found and purchased a postcard, and that made me think about sharing this with you.

A friend of mine is the schoolteacher in a one-room, eight-grade church school in Camden, South Carolina. US Geography is one of the major subjects (apparently across several or all grades), and they are pinning postcards to a map as a means of helping to make our nation a little more concrete in the students' minds.

Notice: If you're reading this after the 2007-2008 school year, please disregard it. I don't want to start any new articles on Snopes here.

However, if you're reading this during the '07-'08 school year, please consider buying a postcard from your area, and from any place you visit, and mailing it to

Camden SDA School
612 Boykin Road
Camden, SC 29020