Brown’s Breakfast Burrito, The Way Back

ByJohn Brown

The Way Back

GULag is the acronym for the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems in the early 1900’s. In Romanized Russian that’s “Glavnoye upravlyeniye ispravityel’no-trudovih lagyeryey i koloniy” which means “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”  The term “Gulag” quickly morphed to represent the camps themselves, which housed a wide range of convicts and many political prisoners.  It’s also come to stand for the repressive Soviet system with its arrests, interrogations, transport in unheated cattle cars, forced labor, destruction of families, years spent in exile, and early and unnecessary deaths.

The Gulag was a meat grinder. An estimated 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953.

Some of those camps were in Siberia, one of the most remote and harsh places on earth. Sawomir Rawicz was one of those who claimed to have escaped such a camp in Siberia. He wrote about it and his subsequent 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India in The Long Walk. That story inspired Peter Weir to write and direct The Way Back, which tells the story of a group of men who attempt to escape out of Siberia, across the Mongolian wastes, and into India.

The film stars Ed Harris (who is interesting in anything he does), Colin Farrel (also starred in Ondine), Mark Strong (the villain in Sherlock Holmes), Saoirse Ronan (the fabulous lead in Hanna), and Jim Sturgess (the boyfriend in One Day). One of the group is an outright murderer. The others are all political dissidents—a teacher, priest, businessman, artist, etc. I found the performances honest and believable. But it wasn’t just the characters–the screenwriters subtly used syntax and word choice to transport the viewer.

But more important than the believability were the various tensions and stories contained within the escape plot. Each of the men, and the lone girl, has a story, and the film gives space for the stories to be told. As for the lone girl: Ronan was amazing in Hannah.  She’s amazing here. Furthermore, the role she played here leavened the whole film with something it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The story will surprise you, make you shed a tear, think, and laugh. When you’re finished, you’ll talk about it. It’s that kind of a film. If you like dramas with action and suspense, I think you’ll like this film.

As always, use KidsInMind.com to see if it contains things you might find objectionable.

Brown’s Breakfast Burrito

How about a meal that’s so good you’ll want to slow way down to savor each bite? A breakfast that will keep you full until lunch? A tasty repast that isn’t loaded with mind-numbing calories? Let me suggest the John Brown breakfast burrito. It’s full of succulent umami, bursts of piquant pepper, healthy mushrooms, and lots of filling protein. And it only takes about 10 minutes to prepare. The recipe below makes one burrito. Scale it up to feed more.  

VEGGIES

  • 1/4th red bell pepper, chopped into small pieces
  • ½ to 1 cup of mushrooms, sliced
  • Dash of thyme

EGGS

  • 2 eggs (120 calories)
  • 1 T milk or half-and-half
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Dash paprika
  • Dash garlic powder
  • Dash onion powder

 THE REST

  • Pam cooking spray
  • 1 tortilla (150 calories)
  • 1 ounce of Jimmy Dean Premium Pork sausage (90 calories)

If you don’t have one of the spices, don’t freak out. It will still taste great. But the spices really take it to the next level. Here are the instructions. 

  1. Start with your veggies. Spray pan with Pam and sauté peppers for two minutes on medium high heat. Add mushrooms. Give them a spray of Pam and dash with salt. Cover until the mushrooms sweat (release their water).
  2. Next is the sausage. While mushrooms are cooking, start your sausage frying.
  3. Finish veggies. Uncover mushrooms. Just before you finish them, sprinkle with a dash of thyme. When the spice becomes fragrant (its smell rises up in delicious glory from the pan), remove the veggies from the pan and cover to keep them warm.
  4. Cook eggs. Turn heat down to medium low. Beat eggs, milk, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Spray pan you used for veggies with Pam, then cook your scrambled eggs on medium low heat, stirring and scraping the whole time. And keep it on medium low—no browning or burning of eggs allowed! Cook until the eggs glisten with the last bits of moisture. Remember: you don’t want dry desert eggs. You want soft succulent ones.
  5. Assemble the glorious concoction. Put the veggies, scrambled eggs, and sausage in your tortilla and wrap it up smartly. (What does “smartly” mean? I don’t know, but it sounded good, didn’t it?)
  6. Go to heaven and return singing. This means you eat your breakfast burrito, but you do it savoring each bite. This is food meant to be enjoyed, not gobbled.

 As for calories, I estimate about 360 for the main ingredients. Veggies really don’t count in my book. Come on! Nobody gained weight eating turnips. But I’ll round it up to 400 just to be safe. Add in a glass of water and a piece of fruit and you’ve got a 450 calorie breakfast that starts your day off with delight, gratitude, and the joy of redemption. It could also make those you cook for kneel down upon the floor in well-deserved homage. And that’s always a nice thing for the cook.

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  • Interview with Author Judson Roberts

    ByJohn Brown

    I’m very excited to present an interview I did with Judson Roberts, author of the Strongbow Saga.

    Over his long and varied career, Judson Roberts has been a police officer, federal agent, organized crime prosecutor, and private investigator. He is also reputedly a distant descendant of Rollo, also known as Rolf or Hrolf, the Viking leader who in 911 AD entered into a treaty with the King of the Western Franks and was granted the lands located around the mouth of the Seine River which eventually became known as Normandy, after the Northmen who settled there. He currently lives in Houston, Texas, but is looking forward to moving. (I’d think–what’s a Viking gonna do in landlocked Houston except go crazy?)

    Here’s what the scion of Rollo had to say. BTW, you’re going to see how ebooks have changed things so much for authors.

    *

    JB: Judson, you’ve had quite a rollercoaster ride with publishing these last few years. You were picked up by HarperTeen for a trilogy. Orson Scott Card reviewed the first novel and called it “A well-written, well-researched, exciting, moving historical novel.” But some things didn’t go as planned. Give us the story.

    JR: That’s a good way of putting it: some things didn’t go as planned. The whole experience has been a valuable lesson for me, in part about what realistically to expect when dealing with a big publisher, but even more so, that often in life, things that seem like disasters at the time can, in the long run, prove to be opportunities we never could have found otherwise.

    My experience with HarperCollins was not a happy one. But before I get into that, I should give a bit of background information. The books that HarperCollins published are the first three volumes of a historical fiction series, set in the world of the Vikings during the 9th century, which I plan to eventually be five books long. I always envisioned the series as adult fiction, and wrote each book as such.

    I initially had a very hard time finding an agent. After a year or so of trying, I saw an advertisement about the Maui Writers Conference in Hawaii that said that authors could submit a “resume” consisting of a brief excerpt and a pitch for their current work to the conference-for a fee, of course-and the resume would be circulated to all agents and publishers attending the conference. I gave it a shot, and ended up being contacted by three agents as a result. One was especially eager—she asked me to give her an exclusive look at the full manuscript, but promised to give me her decision within two weeks. In fact, she asked to represent me within a week. Her agency primarily handles children’s and young adult books, but she assured me she also handled some adult fiction and wanted to handle more, so that, and her enthusiasm, won me over.

    She ended up being unable to interest any adult fiction editors in the book—at that time, I’d only actually written what is now book 1 of the series, Viking Warrior, although the way that book ends there’s obviously more of the story to come. So she asked if she could try to sell it as YA fiction, I agreed, and not too long after that, she secured a three book contract for the Strongbow Saga with HarperTeen, part of the children’s books division of HarperCollins.

    My editor at HarperCollins was very good-whatever I may feel about other divisions of that publisher, I’ve had nothing but good experience with editorial staff there-and was very enthusiastic about the series. She never made me tone the books down in any way—as intended adult fiction, and historically accurate to the period, there are some scenes that are quite violent. She even went so far as to say that she could see the series developing the kind of enthusiasm across different age groups-becoming a cross-over book for teens and adults-whose popularity might last for many years, similar to The Lord of the Rings, and she. That was a bigger vision than I had for the books, but it was certainly an exciting comparison to hear-The Lord of the Rings has been my favorite book since I first read it decades ago in high school. Unfortunately, the marketing side of HarperCollins apparently did not share her vision.

    Trouble in paradise initially began with the cover design. Someone in marketing decided that the group of targeted readers (and as it turned out, the marketing side never had any idea of trying to reach adult readers—they worked for the children’s division, after all) least likely to be attracted to a book about the Vikings was teenage girls, so they developed a series of covers, using different samples and focus groups, specifically designed to attract them. The results look a lot like covers for romance novels, though at least without the bare chests.

    In the months leading up to the release of book 1, I asked the marketing department what plans they had to get the word out about the new series, and what I could do to help. They responded that their primary focus was going to be libraries, that they’d be pushing the books hard to librarians, using them as a gateway to get the books in front of young readers. They’d also be sending out the typical round of advance review copies prior to release.

    The reality was far different. Had it been a test of stealth technology, Viking Warrior’s release would have been a great success, but book releases are not supposed to totally invisible. It was not reviewed in a single major review venue—my agent said she had never, in her entire career, seen a new series being launched in hardback by a major publisher get no reviews at all. I’d suggested a number of specialized venues to send review copies to also—publications specifically targeted at fans of history and historical fiction, reenactors, and the like, and none of them put out reviews, either. Eventually I started contacting a number of these smaller venues, and learned than none had received review copies of my book. It looked like someone on the marketing side made a huge mistake and somehow failed to send out review copies, although HarperCollins has repeatedly refused to admit that had happened.

    Eventually a few scattered reviews were received months after Viking Warrior had been released, but by then the damage had been done. I learned a new term: “sell through.” In publishing, that term refers to how many of the copies of a book that are shipped out to distributors and booksellers are actually sold, instead of being returned. The first months after a book’s release are the most carefully scrutinized—publishers want a new book to hit the ground running and sell lots of copies quickly. Needless to say, if no one has ever heard of a book, and its only sales occur when someone just happens to discover it on a bookstore’s shelves (and on the shelves of the children’s books section, in the case of my books) that kind of early momentum does not happen.

    The promised campaign to reach out to librarians never happened, either. About two or so or so years after the series first came out, I began periodically receiving emails from school librarians who had belatedly discovered the books, fallen in love with them themselves, and had become eager advocates for the series to their students. Over and over, I’ve heard from these librarians, “Why have I never heard of these books before?” One even confronted a HarperTeen representative at a big library conference, asking why they didn’t publicize the series more, and the rep didn’t even know what books she was talking about. And always, they asked when the next book in the series would be coming out.

    That was a painful question. Because the sell through numbers were so low for book 1, each of the next two books had successively smaller printings, and again received little or no support from the publisher. By the time the third book came out, the series was unofficially dead. My editor said that, based on the numbers, there was no way she could persuade HarperCollins to buy the other two books in the series. However, the publisher had the right to buy them locked up with an option clause in the contract, so I was unable to publish them any other way, either. It was not until 2010—after my original editor had moved from HarperCollins to another of the big publishers, and after the decision had been made to start taking the series out of print-that the option clause was released, and I had the unrestricted right to finish my own series.

    JB: Oh. My. Heck. Wow, talk about a sucker punch. Body blow, body blow! I knew some of the details from Card’s review, but this just fills me with dismay. How could that happen? I don’t know. Mistakes are made, but geez. I’m sure those must have been a rough couple of years as a writer. Of course, you knew you had a good book. So what happened next?

    JR: There were certainly a couple of grim years in there. I couldn’t write the next book in the series because HarperCollins was keeping it locked up with the option clause of the contract, my sales—and royalty income—were dropping to minimal levels, and my agent—now my former agent—basically said it was all a tough break, and I should just give up on the series and move on to something else. Given that I’d spent years of research developing my base of knowledge and expertise about the Vikings and their time period, that suggestion didn’t sit very well.

    What really sustained me as a writer during this period were the emails I received from readers. Understand that when I starting writing this series, my goal was to try to write a story that  would have the following attributes, of the novels I’ve read over my lifetime that I’m most enjoyed and that have stuck with me as lasting favorites: I wanted the world the story takes place in to be exotic and different from our own, but so vivid that the reader is swept into it (and since the series is historical fiction, I also wanted it to be as rigorously accurate as possible), and I wanted the characters to become real for the reader, so that readers would become emotionally involved with them. But I truly never anticipated the kind of responses the story seems to be evoking in some people. For example, I had several emails from a major in the Australian Army, stationed in Afghanistan, who said the books are part of his permanent inspirational collection, and that he and his young son both love them. A young man told me the books had helped him during a difficult period when he was going through drug rehabilitation, and recently a young woman wrote to tell me that her cousin, who’d recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan and was deeply disturbed by his experiences there, had enjoyed the books and they’d given him comfort. I’ve been tremendously moved, but also more than a little amazed, at how deeply some readers are connecting Halfdan, the protagonist of the series, and I am resolved to finish the story for them.

    I eventually decided to sidestep the option clause by writing a stand-alone historical thriller, which involves some of the characters from the series but not the protagonist, which will in some ways also be a prequel to the series, in that I’m using it to introduce a new character who will play a major role in the final novel of the Strongbow Saga when it’s written. The new novel—its title is The Beast of Dublin—is set in Ireland about five years before the series begins, and part of its plot involves a twist on the Beowulf story. I’m still in the midst of writing that novel—Ireland in the mid-ninth century proved to have horribly difficult history and culture to research and understand, so I’m far behind my planned schedule.

    Meanwhile, during 2010 things started to happen. Around the middle of the year I begin hearing about an author named J.A. Konrath and his experiences self-publishing through Amazon’s Kindle e-book store. He had a number of books that had previously been traditionally published but had gone out of print, so he made them available again as e-books, and also self-published some books he’d written that had never sold. He has experimented a lot with pricing, cover designs, etc. and has published his results on a blog he writes, to spread the word about how Amazon has changed the game for authors, giving them a way to make a living through their writing free of the problems inherent in the traditional publishing system. As an experiment and to learn how to create an ebook, I published a roughly 30,000 “first look” preview of The Beast of Dublin for any Strongbow Saga fans who wanted to get a glimpse of what I’m currently writing—almost every email I receive from readers asks when my next book is coming out.

    Also around the middle of 2010, I noticed that Amazon had started listing book 2 of my series, Dragons from the Sea, as unavailable. It took months to get HarperCollins to even admit they’d taken that book out of print, and then to respond to a request I sent them that rights to the book be reverted to me, but finally, in October, I owned that book again. While I was waiting for the reversion to come through, I worked with a tremendously talented computer and graphics designer named Luc Reid to create a new cover which does justice to the book, and after the time consuming process of re-editing the book (is any author ever satisfied enough with a finished book to forego a chance to tweak it one more time?) and the excruciatingly slow process of converting it into Kindle format—I do NOT have any skills at computer language or programming—I managed to get the book live in the Kindle store by late October.

    In the meantime, HarperCollins took book 1 of the series out of print, so the whole process—request reversion of rights, design new cover, re-edit, and convert to Kindle format, began again. Book 1 of the series, Viking Warrior, did not go live in Amazon’s Kindle store until December 24th. Christmas had been my target date, because Amazon has surprised every analyst and expectation by selling somewhere between seven and eight million Kindles during 2010, many during the months leading up to Christmas, so even the traditional publishers have been expecting to see a huge surge in e-book sales beginning in early 2011.

    It’s still early days yet, but so far I’m tremendously encouraged by how my books are moving on Amazon. The total numbers still probably would not impress a big traditional publisher looking for the quick sell-through blitz, but thanks to Amazon’s generous royalty program, I’m starting to see my series produce some meaningful income. In October, when book 2 first went live for part of the month but book 1 was unavailable, I earned barely over $100. During November, despite the fact that book 1 was still unavailable, sales earnings climbed to about $470. In December they jumped to over $800, and if the rate of sales for January keeps up for the entire month like the first two weeks have gone, they’ll easily pass $2,000.

    And the earnings alone aren’t the whole story. Amazon’s sales reports reflect that a significant portion of these sales are taking place outside of the U.S., and I’ve begun having contacts from new readers in the U.K., Scandinavia, and even Spain. HarperCollins had insisted on acquiring foreign rights with their contract, but then essentially did nothing with them. Now I have a chance to get the story into overseas markets.

    I’m not yet ready to say I’ll never try the traditional publishing route again—I’ll probably at least test those waters with The Beast of Dublin once it’s finished. But I will, without question, self-publish book 4 of the series through Amazon once it is written. There are just so many advantages, not the least of which is that I can get the book to readers within a month or two after I’ve finished writing it, compared to a year or longer via the traditional publishing route. The world we as writers are working in is changing dramatically.  I don’t think anyone really knows what it’s going to look like ten years from now, but so far, it’s looking like the changes could be very good for writers.

    JB: Hey, I’ll take an extra $1-2k any month (grin). I’m so excited to see this series find its audience. What particularly impresses me is the resonance the books have had with some of your readers. You know, there’s art that entertains, art that gets in your face on purpose, art that enlightens, art that gives solace—I’m sure there are dozens of other things that art does. You mentioned your goals with the book in your response. But do you have another ultimate goal? Or maybe I should say, what’s your view of yourself as an author? What is it you see yourself providing the reader?

    JR: I view myself as a storyteller. My goal is to provide readers with entertainment, escape, to touch them emotionally, and maybe occasionally subtly provide a bit of inspiration.

    JB: I love it. It’s clear you’re succeeding. I think I have two more questions for you. First, I’d like you to tell my readers about Viking Warrior, the first book in the Strongbow Saga, itself. It should be clear now that it’s a historical, but what’s it about?

    JR: The story is set during the mid-ninth century. When it begins in Viking Warrior, Halfdan, the protagonist, is a fifteen year old slave living on the estate of a Danish chieftain. His mother, also a slave, is an Irish noblewoman stolen years ago in a raid, and his father the chieftain whose estate they live on and belong to.

     The chieftain is mortally wounded in a raid on England, and is brought home by his son, Harald, to die. The chieftain wants Halfdan’s mother to accompany him on his death voyage to the next world (an actual custom sometimes practiced in Viking society). She cuts a bargain that will cost her her life–if he tries to force her, she will call upon the god of the Christians to curse him and derail his death voyage, but if he agrees to free Halfdan and acknowledge him as his son, she will go willingly.

     After the funeral, Harald, now the head of the family, undertakes to train Halfdan in the skills he will need as a free man and a warrior. But Halfdan’s new life is soon shattered by a terrible act of treachery that leaves Harald and most of his followers dead, and Halfdan on the run with the warriors of an enemy chieftain hunting him.

    JB: (Folks, if Card’s review and that description doesn’t induce you to read this excellent book, I don’t know what will.) Dude, talk about a setup. I think anyone who is a Bernard Cornwell fan should enjoy this. You’ve mentioned a bit about what books you’re working on, but give us the details about what’s coming next and what’s available right now.

    JR: Currently the first three books of the Strongbow Saga series are available, although paper editions of book 1, Viking Warrior, and book 2, Dragons from the Sea, are temporarily out of print. I hope to get a new print edition of Dragons  back out within a week or so.  It will take a bit longer to get the new print version of Viking Warrior  into circulation, because I have to hire someone to set up the print format, and I’m at the mercy of their time constraints. However, for now new and used copies of both are still available–often quite cheaply–on Amazon through affiliated booksellers, and they’re also available as e-books through Amazon’s Kindle store.

     I’m currently in the middle of writing the novel I mentioned earlier, The Beast of Dublin, which is set in same the world as the series and includes a number of characters from it, but takes place in Ireland about five years before the series begins and will be a stand-alone historical thriller. As soon as I finish it, I’ll begin writing the fourth book of the Saga–I’ve already got the plot roughly outlined. Over the five books of the series, readers will journey with Halfdan over much of the Viking world. Books 2 and 3 are set mostly in western Frankia–the kingdom that became modern France–and in book 4, Halfdan’s pursuit of his sworn enemy will carry him from Denmark to Sweden and down into Russia.

    JB: It looks like you’re going to be keeping busy. Judson, this has been great. I really enjoyed the interview. Thanks so much for taking time out to share your experience with us.

    JR: Thank you, John. It was my pleasure. You’re a thorough interviewer.

    *

    John sez . . . first of all, wow. Talk about a fighter. Bam, bam, bam and the series is on the floor, bleeding and written off as dead. A lot of authors might have given up at that moment and gone onto pole dancing or avocado picking. Not Roberts. He gets back up and finds new distribution and continues to write (this time a cool Beowulf thriller). And, lo, his books are finding their audience–all over the world! Second, I think five years ago Roberts could have only come back under a different name. But now, heck, he’s selling on Amazon. And not just floating around with a book sale every month. He’s in the 2000’s out of hundreds of thousands of books. Holy schnitzel. Look at this ranking as of 1/24/11 5:11 PM my time (the most important time).

    Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,349 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

    A book and series considered dead is selling as well as or better than thousands of other “live” books. Long live the zombies. Ebooks have changed everything. Everything. So much power is shifting to the creators. It’s totally exciting to me.

    LINKS

    Judson Robert’s website

    Reviews & Praise

    Viking Warrior on Amazon

    2011 Codex Blog Tour

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  • Good Stuff! Jesus Revolution

    ByJohn Brown
    Jesus Revolution poster

    In 1969, Greg Laurie, was seventeen and going to high school Newport Harbor High School in California. Fourteen miles from Disneyland. Just one mile from the beach.

    Laurie was raised by a single mother who had seven marriages and struggled with alcoholism. They moved often, sometimes to very different locations such as New Jersey and Hawaii. He was not raised in the Christian faith or a church environment.

    He began participating in the hippie movement, doing drugs, dropping out, because it was fun and because maybe this was the way.

    The 1960s and early 1970s was the height of the hippie movement, which sought love, beauty, honesty, freedom, and fun. Hippies felt that “The Man” (the establishment, the authorities, those in charge, Big Brother) had caused huge problems. And they wanted to drop out of that society. Leave it utterly. Find a new way.

    Why? What was the problem?

    The 1960s was the decade of the Vietnam war. It was the decade when we came to the brink of a nuclear World War 3 with the USSR over the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was the decade when a huge portion of the United States strove for equal rights for minorities and women against a lot of opposition. There were riots. Protests. Beatings. This was the decade when Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were assassinated. There were problems galore.

    Now the 1960s was also a terrific decade. We passed civil rights legislation, men landed on the moon, super nerds introduced BASIC computer code which opened the door to the computer revolution. It was a decade of many good things, including the year when Lovely Wife was born. Let’s not forget that.

    But it was certainly a tumultuous decade. And the hippies offered a counterculture. A different path.

    A lot of youth followed that path. For example, in 1969 half a million hippies showed up at the Woodstock festival to protest the war, capitalism, and convention, and celebrate peace, love, and individual freedom.

    This is the world young Greg Laurie was living in. And he was heading down the drug-hippie path.

    But then he met a man named Lonnie Frisbee who looked like a hippie, had been a hippie, right at the epicenter in San Francisco, but was now inviting fellow hippies and youth to a different path.

    A path that featured Christ. But not in the way of many of the churches at the time.

    How was this path different? Did Greg turn around?

    There’s a new movie out that is based on these true events. You can watch it and find out.

    It’s called Jesus Revolution.

    Nellie and I enjoyed the heck out of it. We laughed. We were on the edge of our seats, moved, and inspired. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I want to watch it again.

    It’s a great entertainment for the whole family.

    If you’re looking for a terrific, feel-good show, I think you’ll love Jesus Revolution. Give it a try.

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  • Good Stuff: For All Eternity

    ByJohn Brown

    This year I was introduced to a little gem of a book that has had a significant and pleasant impact on Nellie’s and my marriage.

    We heard about it from my newlywed daughter and her husband. Now you’d think that two people who, in just a few months, will have been married for twenty-nine years would know all the ropes of this marriage thing. You’d think they wouldn’t come across any real new ideas. But this little book proved that idea wrong.

    This book is For All Eternity by Dr. John L. Lund. At the time of its writing Lund had over forty years of experience as a counselor, college professor, and marriage educator. His focus is in interpersonal communication, and part of his background was working with John Gottman, one of the best marriage researchers of the last few decades.

    In this book, Lund shares what he’s learned with lots of humor and stories. Some of it will be familiar to you, but some of it will be refreshing and new. For example, one belief we frequently cherish is the idea that if someone really loves us, they will know our wants and needs. Their love will somehow endow them with superpowers so that we will never have to communicate our wants. Our loving spouses, if they have any love in them, will be able to discern our wants from the most subtle signs. A nod, a sigh, the wiggle of a nose. And if that doesn’t do it, then surely we will never need to drop more than the merest hint.

    Yeah, wrong.

    Lund explains why the whole notion of “If you have to ask, it doesn’t count” is not only unrealistic, it’s damaging. And that’s just one insight. There are many more. I will let you discover them. But I can tell you that I have found this book so useful and delightful that it will now be one of the two standard books I buy and give as gifts to those who are newly married. I wish I’d had these insights right from the beginning, but better late than never. I’m so happy to have them now.

    A little note. For those who are not members of the Mormon church, Lund is directing his teaching at that crowd. So you will find a sprinkling of quotes in here from church leaders that support what he’s learned in his practice and research. Don’t let that stop you. Mormon or non-Mormon, if you want to improve your marriage, you don’t want to miss this book.

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  • |

    Since when did young adult fiction become the cure for cancer?

    ByJohn Brown

    Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Stree Journal called “Darkness Too Visible” in which she complained that it was hard to find young adult fiction these days that isn’t filled with coarse, dark material–profanity, pederasty, mutilation, etc. She claims that “contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity” and wonders “why is this considered a good idea?” She concludes by saying:

    So it may be that the book industry’s ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn’t be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.

    This, of course, sent hordes of folks into a frenzy of posts sneering at Gurdon’s so-called prissy sensibilities, decrying censorship, and extolling the virtues of young adult literature and dark material in particular. For example, Mary Elizabeth Williams in a Salon piece called “Has young adult fiction become too dark?” rolls her eyes, then deigns to wade into what’s she thinks is an obviously juvenile argument to apparently show Gourdon how “stupid” she really is. Williams concludes:

    One of the terrific side effects of an obviously click-baiting piece of editorial twaddle like Gurdon’s is that it reminds people how many fellow passionate readers there are in the world. That incendiary WSJ piece promptly sparked a tear-jerkingly beautiful twitter #YA saves trend full of heartfelt reactions and links to outstandingly reasoned, article responses from well-read adults and teens on the value within so much of YA literature and its downright lifesaving effects.

    Williams suggests fiction doesn’t have the power to lead people into bad behaviors. After all, she assures us, “an entire generation of women managed to devour the ‘Flowers in the Attic’ series without having sex with their brothers.” No, according to Williams (and all the #YAsaves folks), YA fiction only saves lives. And she provides a link to prove it.

    But Williams misses the mark. Completely. This isn’t about whether fiction has power to influence us in good and bad ways. There’s a huge body of research on media effects which clearly proves fiction’s power for both. Nor is it about the theraputic uses of dark material.

    The heart of the matter revolves around a rather mundane thing–customer service and marketing.

    Gurdon and those parents she describes in her article want a certain type of entertainment. For years, YA fiction has provided that type of entertainment. But things have changed, and the YA label isn’t reliable to them any more. It’s like someone who has purchased steel cut oatmeal for years is now suddenly bringing the bags home to find them filled with sardines or, horrors, Twinkies.

    We can argue the merits of sardines and Twinkies. And a hundred other foods. We can argue the merits of certain types of stories for certain types of readers. And my metaphor above–maybe you think using Twinkies is unfair; maybe you would have wanted me to use something like Triscuts or Wheat Thins. But that’s all beside the point.

    The real problem here is that the publishers have ignored a significant segment of the market who want to buy books but can’t find the types they’re interested in. Either the covers and blurb material don’t help them find what they’re looking for, sometimes misleading them, or the publishers have simply made the mistake of not thinking about this segment of the reading market.

    The fix is easy. (1) Produce more books for these folks. (2) Label your books in a way that makes it easy for the consumer to find what they want. They’re not asking for censorship. They’re asking for a nutrition label that lets them know what they’re getting. Publishers can do what the movie and gaming industries have done with rating systems that prominently display on the cover. Or use some other method. This isn’t a moral issue, it’s simply a matter of helping the right customers find your good or service. It’s a matter of good marketing and branding.

    And I would think, with the upheavals in the book industry today, that publishers and booksellers would want to do whatever they could to boost sales. Surely it doesn’t help to turn customers away because your package is confusing them.

    In the meantime, the battle will rage and this simple practical core of the issue will be lost in the fires and clouds of smoke produced by the arguments extolling and excoriating the virtues and vices of fiction.

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  • Murder, Courts, and Bart D. Ehrman

    ByJohn Brown

    I’m going to talk a bit about some murderers in Detroit, Jesus, and a couple of books I recently read that I think are just awesome.

    MURDER

    Highers BrothersSo, the murderers.

    Let me start by asking this question: can you establish the truth in a court of law?

    Is that what the judge and jury are deciding? The Truth, with a capital T?

    Think about Tommy and Ray Highers, brothers from Detroit. They were convicted of murder. Open and shut case. No parole. They were two nasty buggers who shot a man down over some dope.

    But then twenty-five years later (last year, in fact) they were back in court because new evidence had come to light that undermined the original conviction. For the curious, this fascinating Dateline episode reveals the amazing way the evidence came to light and what happened because of it: http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/full-episode-graduation-night-n72666. Watch it. You’ll be happy you did.

    So the Truth. Capital T. Can you establish that in a court of law?

    No.

    What the justice system does is try to determine which story about the evidence available is the most convincing.

    It’s about telling and judging stories.

    There are many types of evidence folks use when telling their stories. Some of it is very strong. Some is so unreliable, like hunches and hearsay, that the court won’t even allow it to be presented.

    Whatever the evidence, the fundamental nature of this is that you can often tell a number of different stories using the same set of data, the same evidence. Sometimes the stories are variations with minor differences. Sometimes the stories are radically different.

    It’s like having only some of the pieces of a 100 piece puzzle. You look at the four, twenty, or thirty pieces you have and imagine what the rest of the puzzle looks like. And then you invent something that seems reasonable.

    You invent it.

    And if that story meets certain standards of proof, then our system allows the authorities to take certain actions. If the standard of a “reasonable suspicion” is met, it allows a police officer to stop someone. If the standard of “probable cause” is met, a higher standard than reasonable suspicion, an officer can arrest you. If a jury in a criminal case decides the defendant is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” an even higher standard of proof, then the justice system authorizes the authorities to sentence the defendant.

    But at no time does the system seek to establish the absolute truth, the truth with a capital T. It only seeks to establish some level of probability that the story being told about the evidence is true.

    All of this is made more complex because what’s “reasonable” is based on other people’s opinion. We have guidelines and rules to help folks be “reasonable.” But reasonableness is still affected by culture, background, history, etc.

    It’s still opinion.

    OTHER PUZZLES

    What other realm of knowledge works like the justice system and consists of inventing stories about missing parts of the puzzle?

    Well, history does.

    In fact, if you think about it, history is what courts do. The processes and principles of our justice system guide everyone involved in how they go about telling the stories that make up that specific type of history.

    And all historians (lawyers, judges, and juries included) have no means of establishing the absolute truth.

    They can’t use science. Science requires you conduct experiments and reproduce results. But how is a historian going to reproduce the same events? What, they’re going to get Lincoln shot all over again and let the rest of us watch it? Dang, John Wilkes Booth did shoot the man. We all saw it happen down in the lab.

    Sure, they can use science to date a manuscript, or determine what something is made of, or establish some other fact. But all science is doing is providing facts about the pieces of the puzzle you have. About the claims the evidence makes.

    But science can’t fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. It can’t tell the story. The historian has to invent the story that makes the pieces all make sense.

    And then the rest of us determine if that story, that sketch of the full puzzle, is reasonable.

    But that isn’t all there is to it.

    STANDARDS OF PROOF

    Think about conspiracy theories like the ones that claim that the US government perpetrated the 9/11 bombings. Conspiracy theorists are practicing history. They are inventing a story that seems to fit the evidence available to them.

    But what happens when you have only five or ten pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle? What happens when you don’t thoroughly vet the evidence? What happens when someone screws around with the evidence? And I’m not just talking about tampering or invalidating it by thoughtless handling (contaminating DNA, for example). Folks with the best intentions have biases. In fact, we all have biases that lead us to include and exclude various pieces of evidence based on whether they support or oppose the ideas we want to believe.

    Jonathan Haidt explains these biases in his excellent book The Righteous Mind. He explains that with things we want to believe, we often use the standard of “Can I Believe It”?  We look for anything at all that would allow us to believe our position. If we find it, even if it’s flimsy, we discount all the other evidence that may point another way and conclude we have met the burden of proof for our view.

    For things that we don’t want to believe, we often use the standard of “Must I Believe It”? When falling prey to this bias, we look for anything at all that would undermine the thing we don’t want to believe, even if that evidence is flimsy. If we find it, we ignore all the other evidence, even if there’s a mountain of it pointing another way, and claim we have met the necessary burden of proof.

    In court there are all sorts of procedures and standards that need to be followed to help us avoid invalidating evidence or falling prey to our biases. Those procedures and standards don’t remove all risk. But they do remove a lot.

    Which court system would you want to be processed through? The current American justice system or the medieval witch trials?

    Oh, for sure I’d want to be someone accused of witchcraft back when a claim of “I saw her as a witch in my dream” was admissible, as was the test of poking a mole on the accused’s body with a needle to see if said witch flinched enough. I’d be so happy to go back to the days when a confession obtained by torture was incontrovertible evidence.

    So when practicing history, it’s important to have some guidelines, some rules to establish which bits of evidence are more likely (not guaranteed, but more likely) to be reliable. And it’s important that when folks tell their story, they not only share the evidence, but also all the assumptions they’re making.

    JESUS

    Where does Jesus of Nazareth come into all of this?

    Misquoting Jesus by Bart D Ehrman

    Well, Jesus has affected the world more than any other person who has lived on it. The stories we tell about him (the history we have practiced about him for the last 2,000+ years) have changed the world. And those stories will continue to affect us, especially folks in Western cultures, on everything from foreign policy to which clothes think are fit to be worn in public.

    Who was Jesus? Did he really exist? Was he a god? What did he really teach? Have his teachings been changed?

    These are all fundamental questions. And for the last two-hundred years historians have been re-examining the pieces of the puzzle, finding new pieces, and telling new stories to explain it all.

    Some of these historians believe in Jesus as a god. Some don’t. Either way, the conversation is fascinating.

    Jesus Interrupted Bart D Ehrman

    I just read three historical books about Jesus that were awesome. AWESOME. Not because I agreed with all of the author’s conclusions, i.e. his stories. I don’t. But because of the way he practiced his history. The way he told his stories. And because what he shared gave me new insights to my stories about Jesus.

    The three books, all by Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, are:

    1. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
    2. Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
    3. Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

    I’ve read the Bible many times, and I’m a believer. Of course, the question is a believer in which story?

    Did Jesus Exist Bart D Ehrman

    What Ehrman so engagingly makes clear is that there have indeed been many stories about Jesus. In fact, the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and the writings of Paul (most of the rest of the New Testament) seem to all portray a different man and message. Not only do they say things that flat out contradict each other on some details, but if you look at each book separately, each author seems to have a slightly different take on Jesus.

    Furthermore, it appears that what we now have has changed over time. For example, it seems the last twelve verses of Mark were not in the oldest manuscripts. There have been other changes. One of the more notable ones occurs in John 5:7-8.

    Our earliest texts say:

    “For there are three that bear record, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”

    But later texts say:

    “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”

    Nowhere else in the New Testament do we have anything that states that creedal doctrine so explicitly. Did John write that? Or was the extra material added to make the idea of the trinity scriptural?

    And what do we make of the fact that we have no manuscript that dates to anywhere close to when Jesus lived? We have some small fragments of manuscripts with a few verses of John, Revelation, and Matthew dated around 150 AD. But the oldest manuscripts we have that contain the majority of any of the gospels are for the gospels of Luke and John, and these are dated around 200 AD. The oldest manuscripts with the full New Testament are dated around 350 AD.

    That’s more than 300 years after Jesus died!

    Have you played the game of telephone? Are we sure that the oral traditions that were written down weren’t changed? What happened to the books mentioned in the Bible that we don’t have now? For example, Jude mentions a prophecy of Enoch that we don’t have in our current Bible. Are we sure that the copyists didn’t add to the text like it seems some did to John?

    And what about the term “Christ”? It’s actually the Greek word for “messiah” which just means one anointed with oil to perform a special service for god. Christ wasn’t Jesus’s last name. It was a title: Jesus the anointed one.

    The anointed ones in those days were kings and prophets and priests. It appears most of the historical sources suggest that a “messiah” to the Jews of that time was someone who would throw off foreign rule and establish the kingdom of Israel as David had. In fact, there were a whole bunch of people who claimed to be messiahs. Here’s a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah_claimants.

    Judas Maccabeus was considered a messiah because he threw off Greek rule in 164 BC. But then around 63 BC Israel was taken over by Rome. And Rome wasn’t too keen on revolts, so around 4 BC they crucified Judas the Galilean for claiming to be the messiah, the king of the Jews. Crucifixion, it seems, was the punishment reserved for seditionists. They crucified Jesus and a whole bunch of other guys claiming to be the king of the Jews. And their crimes were written on a board above them, which is why they hung the words “King of the Jews” over Jesus’s head on the cross. Here’s the criminal, and here’s his crime. These other messiahs were not claiming to be a god that came to earth to atone for sins, but anointed by God to throw off foreign rule and establish his earthly kingdom again.

    Jesus talks a lot about the kingdom of God. Was Jesus just another one of the seditionists?

    Ehrman examines these and many other questions as a historian, providing all sorts of insights.

    But the fabulous thing is that he doesn’t just tell his story. He gives his evidence. Exposes his assumptions. And in all three books he explains the guidelines or “rules” historians use to when trying to determine which stories are more likely and which evidence is more reliable.

    I was enlightened, challenged, and delighted. I learned things about Jesus’s life and times that have helped me understand what I read in the Bible better.

    LIMITS

    Of course, the historical method has its limits.

    Historians, because they are looking for explanations (stories) that are more probable, automatically select against things that are improbable. They exclude miracles. They exclude any story that says Christ was actually resurrected.  They may establish that a lot of folks thought he was resurrected, but they don’t have any methods to establish something like a resurrection actually occurred. And so they ignore it. Historians exclude modern revelation. If someone today were to have a visitation from Jesus as Paul did, the historians would exclude that.

    But we all know that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. We all know that sometimes the less likely thing is exactly what occurred.

    Historians are looking for what is most probable. Not what actually happened. Because they can’t go back and time and verify their story.

    Excluding “improbable” things changes the types of stories the pieces of the puzzle support. For many of us, me included, we do accept evidences many historians don’t as pieces of the puzzle. And because we have these pieces, we’re able to tell different types of stories.

    The cool thing about Ehrman is that he explains this. He’s not trying to hide anything. Instead, he’s explaining how to approach the Bible from a historical point of view, and where the principles of the historical method lead him.

    And I have found that those methods in his hands have a lot to offer.

    If you’re someone who is interested in religion–as a believer, agonistic, or atheist–you will love these books. Ehrman himself was once an ardent believer, but is now agnostic. However, his respect for believers, including other scholars in his field who believe in the divine Jesus, comes through loud and clear. Ehrman has no axe to grind. He is simply sharing the stories of Jesus that make sense to him and many other historians. And he does it in a very interesting and easy-to-read style.

    If these books sound like something you want to try, I’d start with Misquoting Jesus, move to Jesus Interrupted, and then finish with Did Jesus Exist? And if you enjoy those, let me recommend two more of Ehrman’s books. The first is The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed, which looks at the discovery and content of a very ancient manuscript that calls itself The Gospel of Judas. The second is Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which explores the variety of Christian faiths that existed in the few hundred years after Jesus’s death.

    Happy reading!

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2 Comments

  1. I also enjoyed “The Way Back.” I wanted to know more and it didn’t take me long to find out that there was a lot of controversy about the truth of the book. So I would have liked it better if the blurb had said, “May have been inspired by real events.”

    Your food advise has been solid in the past. I am excited to give this breakfast burrito a try.

  2. Matt,

    Yeah, I agree, and that’s why I said “claimed.” They probably shouldn’t have had that blurb at all because it sets up expectations. All they needed to do was talk about the Gulag and escape attempts etc. Oh, well.

    As for the burrito, you’re going to love it. Another version is to use tater tots instead of the mushrooms. Not very high class, but delicious nevertheless. Let me know how you like it.

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