With the coronavirus pandemic has come a whole new vocabulary. I mean, a year ago would you have known any of these terms: social distancing, N95 face mask, in-person, flatten the curve, sharing droplets, PPE (Personal protection equipment), telehealth, zoomers, virtual services, hydroxychloroquine!

Many churches chose to livestream or pre-record their services, since indoor crowds present a risk for being virus hotspots—people breathing the same air containing droplets. They could hold “virtual services” with only a handful of participants: the pastor and perhaps a lector and a handful of musicians

By June, though, quite a few churches who had restarted in-person services are returning to holding virtual services only—they are livestreaming to Facebook Live, or posting prerecorded services to their websites. Last Sunday was my first in-person service at Nuuanu Congregational Church, but after last week’s deacons meeting, it was decided to return to virtual services only, especially with the recent rise of coronavirus cases in Hawaii.

And with that comes a whole new ballgame.

John Litzler explains in his article titled “Privacy and Copyright Considerations for Churches Broadcasting Services Online“: Copyright is a form of intellectual property that allows the creator of a creative work the exclusive right to reproduce, display, redistribute, and make derivatives of the creative work (“reproduce”) and control expression of the idea the work communicates... As the creator of the work, churches (or sometimes the church’s pastor under an intellectual property agreement) already own the copyrights to sermons, announcements, prayers, and other similar components of the worship services. As a result, church copyright issues mainly involve the reproduction of music, lyrics, videos, and images.

In order to use copyrighted music, one must obtain a music and lyrics license before broadcasting or livestreaming, from companies such as Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) and OneLicense.Net. In fact, my music publishing company, Ionian Arts, Inc., recently became a member publisher with OneLicense.Net.

If you do not obtain a livestreaming license, YouTube or Facebook may take down your video. Here’s a way to avoid a YouTube “copyright strike”:

So I figured the easiest thing to do, at least for myself as the organist, is to only play music in the public domain— that is music created before 1924. Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

In the United States, any musical works published in 1924 or earlier, in addition to those voluntarily placed in public domain, exist in the public domain. In most other countries, music generally enters the public domain in a period of fifty to seventy-five years after the composer’s death.

For me that’s easy! I immediately pulled out music by Bach, Brahms and Mendelssohn for prerecording the next couple weeks’ services.

My recording session was yesterday, and you might think it’s easy-peasy, just set up my phone as a video camera, and play away, but it’s not so! Each piece took multiple “takes,” because I’d “make a mistake” (Horrors!) and had to restart the video. I finally finished and sent the links to Russell Ishida, the music director, and by all accounts, it turned out just fine. You may remember that the Lutheran Church of Honolulu frequently contracted Russell to play the trumpet in our services and concerts.

Which was a good thing, because …

Last night I found myself in the emergency room of Queen’s Hospital! Yesterday I went to the post office to mail off packages of my homemade face masks. It was on the return to my building, just across the street, that I decided to enter through the loading zone, and I saw a large truck parked there. As I rounded the back of the truck, I kept my eyes on the open door, and thought to myself, “Good, I won’t have to pull out my fob to unlock the door!”

Most unfortunately, I didn’t see that the truck driver had lowered the lift gate to the bottom, and I tripped over it with a huge SPLAT (!), immediately sending my body crashing to the ground! I landed on my left side and was so stunned that I couldn’t get up for several minutes.

All of it was captured by the building’s security video cameras, and the staff of my building immediately rushed out, and called 911 to check me out. I waved off any suggestion to transport me to the hospital but the EMTs suggested that I call my doctor. She didn’t return my call for several hours, but then asked me to go for an xray at nearby Queen’s Hospital, which is where I was last night. Turns out I have a cracked rib, which will take 2-4 weeks in rest and recuperation.

Dear me!