November 21, 2003

Blevins discovers lost radio program

It’s not everyday that someone stumbles across a rare recording of a program from radio’s golden age. But that’s exactly what happened recently at Lyon College. While working with some 50-year-old reel-to-reel recordings, Brooks Blevins, director of Lyon’s Regional Studies Center, discovered a five-minute segment of a radio series that went off the air more than half a century ago.

This segment was the first five minutes of an episode of “The Affairs of Peter Salem,” a popular detective show presented live each week on the Mutual Broadcasting System from May 1949 to April 1953. According to Jack French, editor of Radio Recall and past president of the Metro Washington Old Time Radio Club, “The Affairs of Peter Salem,” starred Santos Ortega, a popular radio actor who also played Nero Wolfe, Charlie Chan, and Perry Mason.

The most incredible part of the discovery is that this five-minute clip represents the only known recording of the series still in existence. “Vintage radio collectors and archivists have been searching for an audio copy of this series for fifty years, with no success,” French stated in a letter to Blevins. And French isn’t the only one excited about the find. Elliot Vittes, whose father Louis wrote the scripts for “The Affairs of Peter Salem” and several other popular radio series, has been searching for audio recordings of his father’s shows since all of Louis Vittes’s scripts and materials were destroyed in a flood a few years ago. “The Affairs of Peter Salem” was the only one Elliot Vittes was missing, according to French.

As is so often the case with such discoveries, Blevins was working on something completely unrelated when he discovered the snippet of the lost radio program. The recording was on the reverse side of an old seven-inch reel-to-reel tape that contained recordings of Arkansas (now Lyon) College’s Holy Week programs in the early 1950s.  The Holy Week programs were recorded and broadcast on KBTA, Batesville’s lone radio station at the time. These particular Holy Week recordings were donated to Lyon College about a decade ago by Fitzhugh Spragins, an alumnus and retired professor whose father, the Rev. John D. Spragins, had delivered the Holy Week devotionals.

Upon hearing the recording of “The Affairs of Peter Salem” for the first time, Blevins searched the internet for information on the show. A brief description of the series on Thrilling Detective website led him to Jack French.  Blevins sent a copy of the recording on compact disc to French, who wrote to offer the “thanks of the Old Time Radio community for the kind offer to put it in circulation.”  “Rare finds, such as the audio segment you uncovered, are a cause of great joy to all of us who painstakingly search for years, trying to locate missing radio shows,” said French. “That is precisely what makes your discovery so gratifying.”

Christmas festivities profiled

The College’s annual faculty and staff Christmas festivities will begin on Friday, December 5, with a Christmas buffet dinner. The dinner will begin at 5 p.m. with a Christmas buffet in Edwards Commons to which faculty, staff, their spouses and children are invited free of charge. Santa Claus will make a special visit at 5:45 p.m.

 The buffet will be followed by the Lyon College Concert Choir's annual Christmas concert at 7:30 p.m. in Brown Chapel. Under the baton of Joel Plaag, and accompanied by the Lyon College Community Strings chamber orchestra and pianist Betsy Ross, the choir will perform works by Faure, Mozart, Rutter, and others. Everyone is invited to attend. After the concert, the traditional tree-lighting ceremony will take place – complete with caroling – on the steps of the Chapel.

Also, the annual faculty and staff Christmas reception will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 17, at Bradley Manor. Please come and bring your family as we celebrate the Christmas season together.

Festival of Lessons and Carols

Organist Russell Stinson, the Lyon College Flute Choir (directed by Laura Bauman Stinson), and the Lyon College Chamber Singers (directed by Joel Plaag) will perform traditional Christmas music with Scripture readings at 5 p.m. Sunday, December 7, at the Christian Science Society. The program will showcase the church's neo-baroque Flentrop organ. The Christian Science Society is located at 18th and College streets in Batesville. Admission is free.

Bube compares Harry Potter, Left Behind series

About 14 people attended Dr. Paul Bube’s discussion of evil and its representation in both the Harry Potter and Left Behind book series Tuesday at Mabee-Simpson Library. The discussion was the third of a monthly series of events hosted at the library.

Bube began his talk by describing the similarities between the Potter books, which are about a young boys adventures in a school for wizards, and the Left Behind series, which is about a resistance group combating the antichrist in the aftermath of the Biblical Rapture. Some of those similarities include the facts that both series are consistent best sellers; readers of both series say their lives have been changed by what they have read; and that both revolve around confrontation with embodied evil.

Bube also said that the evil in both series can be seen as three different types of evil:

• Contextual evil is the general evil that exists in the world. These can be almost anything that the author views as evil, from child abuse and bullying in the Potter series to abortion and globalism in the Left Behind series.

• Excusable evils are things a character does which are justified by a good motive. For instance, Harry Potter lies, steals, and cheats, but all are done so that he can combat Voldemort,  the series evil villain. In the Left Behind series, the protagonists spy, sabotage, and murder, but only to combat the antichrist.

• Apocalyptic evil is evil incarnate, for its own sake. This is embodied in the antichrist in the Left Behind series and by Voldemort in the Potter books.

Both book series have been the subject of controversy: the Harry Potter books have been condemned by some Christian groups; and the Left Behind books have been criticized by some as being “too preachy.”

But Bube said that in his view,  Harry Potter better represents the Christian message. This is because while the characters in the Left Behind series combat the antichrist by using the same tactics he does, making the contest a question of who can grab the most power rather than a question of who has the better morals, Potter defeats his nemesis by eschewing power, as Christ did on the cross by eschewing his own power to save himself.

“Potter represents the Christian message more appropriately,” Bube said, “and that’s a surprise. That’s not what I would have expected.”

Bube also speculated that like popular Christian authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling may be intentionally writing a series with Christian allegories.

Student response to the talk was positive. “I thought Dr. Bube’s talk was excellent and very interesting,” said freshman Sarah Sweatt.

Panelists discuss public records, FOI

(Editor’s Note: The Lyon College Convocations Committee sponsored a forum on the Freedom of Information November 17. The following article was published in the Batesville Daily Guard on Tuesday, November 18. It is reprinted with permission.)

By Andrea Bruner, Assistant Managing Editor, Batesville Daily Guard

The state’s Freedom of Information Act may have been written by journalists, but it was written for the people of Arkansas.

Every state has some form of the FOI Act, said Suzanne Antley, assistant attorney general, who was one of three panelists Monday night at a forum on the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act at Lyon College’s Nucor Auditorium.

Antley joined the state attorney general’s staff in 1992 and works in the Opinions Division, where she often writes about FOI and other legal issues.

The other panelists included Dennis A. Byrd, chief of the Arkansas News Bureau, and Frank Fellone, deputy editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and former Batesville Daily Guard reporter.

Brenda Blagg, regional editor for The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, was scheduled to be on the panel but was unable to attend.

Arkansas actually has one of the strongest and most comprehensive freedom of information acts in the nation, the panelists said. Enacted in 1967, the Arkansas FOI Act gives the public the right to attend meetings of policy-making, tax-supported bodies, and inspect a wide range of public records at every level of government.

Byrd explained that Robert McCord, who was a member of Sigma Delta Chi, now Society of Professional Journalists, was instrumental in getting the act passed in Arkansas.

“One of the unusual things about the act is that it was written by journalists but it was not just for journalists; it was for the people,” Byrd said.

Byrd said the act covers both public records and public meetings, but most states split those into two different acts. “In Arkansas, the SPJ decided to encompass both, and the act has since become a model for other states,” he said.

He said the act covers “pretty much anything that uses taxpayer money.”

Antley said this includes state agencies, but also some private entities “if they receive public funds and do some sort of governmental work.”

She said the act covers any kind of record, whether the records are required to be kept or just kept, with a few exceptions (governor’s working papers, tax, some economic development, medical and adoption records).

The act was amended in 2001 to include electronic records to the list of writings, recorded sounds, films, tapes and data compilations. By law, requests for records must be met within three days.

“There is unbelievable number of documents available to reporters,” Fellone said.

Byrd was a member of the Electronic Records Study Commission, which saw most of its recommendations to the General Assembly adopted.

“We have a fear about opening the FOI to amendment; we’re always afraid going to lose something, but we knew it was important to include electronic records,” Byrd said. He said while the FOI was opened, he doesn’t believe it was weakened.

Sometimes, citizens run into resistance when bodies want to meet in executive session. There are a limited number of reasons that allow a body to meet in executive session - and a limited number of people who may attend.

Those people include the governing body, the employee being discussed and his or her immediate supervisor; attorneys are not allowed to meet with the body behind closed doors.

“You can’t unring a bell,” Byrd said. “If you try to get in a meeting you think (should be) open, there is nothing you can do on the spot.” Later, the individual can go to the prosecutor, “but that time has passed when you needed to get the information. It’s one of our real problems and we don't know how to get around that.”

The body can discuss security and related topics for example, but when dealing with personnel, the body can only discuss the hiring, firing and disciplining of an employee(s) - salary schedules, for example, are not included. Any action must be taken in public.

Even when an individual applies for a job, those records are public, “even if they don't get the job,” Antley said.

A meeting is defined as a gathering (even a holiday party) of at least two members of a body, even if a quorum is not present, if they discuss business. Furthermore, the members may not take a telephone poll to discuss how they will vote when they do meet next, Antley said.

The panel also discussed a project in 1999 that surveyed offices in all 75 counties to learn how well government agencies complied to requests for open records (and yes, verbal requests count, Byrd said). The FOI Arkansas Project won the Arkansas Press Association’s 2000 award for service to FOI and a Katie Award from the Press Club of Dallas as well as recognition from the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors.

Byrd said the offices were surveyed all on the same day, a monumental task undertaken by individuals in different walks of life, not just reporters. The results were published in newspapers and “showed that basically in Arkansas, the Department of Health did not do a very good job responding to requests.”

The Department of Health is the keeper of restaurant inspection reports, and volunteers asked the county sanitarians for the most recent reports. Thirty-eight (51 percent) did not comply.

When the volunteers went to the county jails and asked for the jail logs, they were nearly run out of town in some instances, Byrd said. “Going in and asking who is in your jail can be intimidating. Some sheriffs wrote down license plate numbers.”

Forty-six of the 75 did give access to the logs, but that left 29 counties that refused.

Antley said one of her tasks is to address foreign journalists, such as from China, Russia or newly-created democracies. “The subject always turns to Freedom of Information, and they are always amazed you can go in and ask for a record and get it.

“It is so crucial to the issue of government corruption. √ɬ¢?| That tells me we have something very special and it needs to be protected.”

She added, “We have to make sure public action is conducted in public.”

Fellone said the FOI is important because “it is our tax money and we ought to be able to figure out how it’s being spent.”

Byrd said he is suspicious of any candidate who promises to “run that office like a business. In a business, you can do things privately, behind closed doors. I don't want a public official who runs his office like a business; that is one of my pet peeves.

“The Freedom of Information Act in Arkansas allows us to see government in action and report on action, and I am thrilled we have a law that gives us the access we have,” Byrd said.

Pipe band activities

The Lyon pipe band played for Gov. Mike Huckabee at the Highway167 opening on November 12. A second drumming seminar was held on campus November 15-16. The band will play their first concert Saturday, November 22, in Tulsa Oklahoma.

Sports

Soccer

Robert Kaloghirou and Christina Bass are the first Lyon College soccer players to be named to the All-TranSouth Athletic Conference teams.

Kaloghirou, a sophomore defender from Jonesboro, and Bass, a freshman forward from Lubbock, Texas, were both named recently to the second team.

Scots head coach Jeremy Bishop said Kaloghirou, a team captain, is deserving of the honor. “Robert works hard on and off the field and is a great leader,” Bishop said. “We have several others like him on the team and, hopefully, next year they, too, will be recognized.”

Bass scored six goals and assisted on two others. Piper Coach Derek Nichols said, “Christina is a player with great speed, technical ability and work rate. This is a great honor since she was only one of two Americans named as forward. Four forwards are named to the first team and four to the second team, and six of the eight were international students.”

The Scots were 8-11 over all and 2-5 in conference play in their second season. The Pipers went 2-14 and 2-4 in their first season of play.

Basketball

The Pipers ended a three-game losing streak with a 68-54 win over the Central Baptist Lady Mustangs in Conway Tuesday. April Ward, a freshman from Sulphur Rock, led the Pipers with 13 points. Sarah Adcock and Prescilla Mathias added 11 points each. Kelly Giczkowski grabbed eight rebounds while Adcock and Melina Bial added six rebounds apiece.

The Pipers will host John Brown University in Becknell Gym Saturday afternoon with tip-off at 2 p.m.

The Scots improved their record to 4-0 Tuesday with a 78-76 victory over Lambuth University. The Scots fought back from a 12-point deficit to maintain their unbeaten record. Brandon Byrd led the Scots with 29 points and three assists. Sophomores Jason Donaldson and Norris Weintz scored 18 points apiece and combined for 24 rebounds. Donaldson led with 13 rebounds.

The Scots will host the John Brown University Eagles at 4 p.m. Saturday in Becknell.

The next scheduled GreenSheet will be available December 5, 2003.

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