Editing TheStarsAreRight:ClayMorrison

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[[File: Male Headshot.jpg|thumb|c|Clay Morrison]]

==Representative Clay Morrison==

''played by Michael Blum''

An 80 year old ex-gunfighter from the old west, Clay is (since early 1931) Nevada's member in the House of Representatives. He's a member of the Judiciary Committee, and a much-courted swing vote in a closely divided House. Before his election, he was one of Carl Ellis's globetrotting investigators - he now works to further prepare the United States for the upcoming Time of Troubles.

Besides his political status, he's a newspaper publisher, radio station owner, and science project manager. 

==Biography==

Clay Arthur Morrison was born July 12th, 1852 in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1859 his family moved to Riverton, Illinois -- about ten miles from Springfield. Two of his older brothers served in the Union Army, and one, George Morrison, died while serving with the 78th Illinois Infantry Regiment, at the Battle of Bentonville.

He left home at the age of 14 to become a cattle-drover. In subsequent years he was a cowboy, ranch hand, deputy sheriff and sheriff, hunter, guide, miner, and cattle rancher. He was a Deputy United States Marshal in the state of Montana in 1895; his other sheriff duties were in the town of Black Rock, Arizona. He served with the Nevada state militia, and also with the Rough Riders in Cuba. He served as a second to John L. Sullivan, in the last bare-knuckles heavyweight prize championship fight, in 1889; Jake Kilrain was the opponent, and Bat Masterson was the timekeeper.

Since 1896, his home has been Carson City, Nevada. The Mortimer Mine "struck it rich" after 1897, and he built his current home in 1900. He's the owner and publisher of the Carson City News; and also owns radio station KGNV in Reno, one of only two in the state. The station is an affiliate of the CBS network, and broadcasts on 1450 kHz, with a power of 500 watts.

He's on various minor boards and commissions in and around Ormsby County, Nevada, and has been a member of the Carson City volunteer fire department since 1904, as part of Warren Engine Company #1. He's a member of the Democratic party, and of the Ormsby County Democratic Club. And of course, since 1930 he's been Nevada's representative in the United States House of Representatives; he's a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Beginning in August of 1932, he was usually in New York, directing the project to build Tesla's "Protective Ray". He has a secretary and a couple of staff in Washington, plus another staffer in Reno, Nevada.

His home address is

:Clay Morrison
:500 North Mountain Street
:Carson City, Nevada

His office in Washington D.C.:  

:Hon. Clay Morrison
:15540 P Street, Suite 121
:Washington, D.C.

Or you can send mail to him via the House Offfice Building. Since late July of 1932, he has an office on the 81st floor of the Empire State Building.

:Clay Morrison
:350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 8100
:New York City

While in New York, he usually stays at the Drake Hotel, at 440 Park Avenue near 56th Street, in Manhattan.

He's 5' 11" tall, with gray hair and a bushy mustache. He carries any number of scars, calluses, and bent-out-of-shape minor body parts, but nothing too dramatic. He wears a sort of "wampum" wrist-band, and a plain silver ring. Those who know him well realize he usually carries a single-action .44 caliber revolver, in an old leather holster. Except for a battered "western" hat, he dresses pretty much the same as any other member of Congress.

== Clay Morrison To-Do List ==


Subjects that Clay Morrison has been keeping an eye on since he was elected to Congress.

* The insidious legacy of Dr. Marklin, and other signs of ab-natural influence on national leaders.
* Blue John, and therefore Madisonville, Puente del Puerto, etc.
* New World Industries and Mr. Chandler
* Indian tribes, and what they might be up to in a magical way
* The Nightsiders
* Nikola Tesla, and his opinions and inventions (Clay has been financing him, and Tesla is officially an advisor to the Judiciary Committee)


[[File:TeslaGram.jpg]]


New subjects that came up on 17 March, 1932 in conference with Carl Ellis:

* Tesla's possible insights and solutions to the Manhattan Rift
* Ectochrome film, sources for Carl Ellis
** Tesla may be able to make ecto-viewers for the Army and Carl
* Japan -- what's up there
* Russia -- what's up there, since the January 10th incident
** Poland, China, Japan, Finland:   all would be likely to carve up a defenceless Russia. What's left of the Army?
* The Penthus Corporation:  who, what, when, where, why, etc.

And further subjects that came up after the Manhattan Incursion:

* U.S. Senator De Beaumont, of Louisiana -- apparently a magically-constructed puppet
* the VFW and American Legion -- the next nest for former NWI and Penthus bad guys?

== Recent Events for Clay Morrison ==


'''Wednesday, 16 March, 1932'''

Carl Ellis calls Clay Morrison at his Washington, D.C. offices. Long time no hear! Mr. Ellis and Rep. Morrison agree to meet the next day in New York City, at the Drake Hotel. Mr. Morrison is asked to look into the Pentheus Corporation, a holding company that may be "up to no good."

'''Thursday, 17 March, 1932'''

Mr. Morrison travels to NYC by train, takes a room at the Drake Hotel, and visits Mr. Ellis. Present are:

* Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, and their son Robert (age less than six months)
* Mr. and Mrs. Mueller
* Boris Valenko
* Roxanne, girlfriend to Boris
* Redland Jack
* Auda Abbasi

After introductions and social chit-chat, they get down to business over sandwiches and drinks. The main topic of discussion is the '''Pentheus Corporation'''. They own farms, oil fields, chemical companies, warehouses, theaters, motion picture distribution firms, and much other stuff. Some of their technical staff (at least) are former NWI employees, and brought strange technology with them. Mr. Ellis believes that Pentheus will use a terrible Event in the near future (a rift in space-time over New York City) to convince hundreds of millions of persons, perhaps a billion persons -- half the population of the Earth -- to sacrifice themselves. The "negotiated future" Record in Tibet was Mr. Ellis's main source of information on Pentheus's plan, until recently.

First to be sacrificed would be prisoners, inmates of asylums, and other "undesirables" -- as of December 31st, 1931 there were 137,516 persons in prisons (state, Federal, and local) within the United States. On the same date, 305,315 persons were patients in state asylums for mental disease, and 76,535 persons in state institutions for epileptics and the feeble-minded. Private asylums hold nearly as many -- to approximate, there are about 800,000 "undesirables" in the United States. If half of the residents of the United States are to be sacrificed, that is 61.5 million persons, of which just over 1% would be "undesirables." Enormous death camps would be set up, for the sacrifices to be herded into, and where they would be devoured or otherwise destroyed by evil entities, supernatural or otherwise. If the best interpretation of Pentheus's plan is to be believed, the supernatural entities will be sated, and the Time of Miracles will proceed without further cataclysms.

How Pentheus learned of the pending disasters, how they developed their plan, what technology is used to predict and control the events, who they actually are, etc. is not firmly established. Mr. Ellis has been in discussions with their board of directors, which seems disturbingly businesslike about this halving of the Earth's population. How every other person on the Earth would be convinced of the need for their death -- as opposed to, say, the death of more "undesirable" foreigners, or ethnic groups -- is not clear. Or how to prevent the choice being "Let's give them Germany (population almost exactly half that of the United States)."

In addition, the Soviet Union was destroyed essentially overnight on January 10th, 1932 ... a scheme by Alexei Vishnaveshki to restore the Romanov dynasty may have succeeded all too well! A ritual that drained the life force from everyone in Russia who did not "love Mother Russia" seems to have been the cause (although diplomats may have been immune). More information is needed! Why the Poles, Finns, Japanese, Turks, etc. have not moved into the depopulated former nation is not clear. Radio broadcasts ceased, international communication ended, and the borders are unguarded. The few foreign embassies still present in Moscow have sent some very strange descriptions of the conditions.

'''Friday, 18 March, 1932'''

Rep. Morrison introduces Auda and Mr. Ellis to Nikola Tesla at breakfast at the Hotel New Yorker. Mr. Tesla, fastidious and eccentric, impresses Mr. Ellis; Rep. Morrison later asks Mr. Tesla to look into reports of a "time-space rift" which may be forming over Manhattan.

Mr. Ellis's team meets again with Congressman Morrison for lunch at the Drake Hotel, for more discussions of Pentheus, etc. It seems that the not-actually-murdered William Desmond Taylor (born William Deane-Tanner) may have brought his expertise with strange "mechanical manipulations" of occult forces from NWI to Pentheus. He more recently has been using the name Richard Sands.

The team is offered the use of Rep. Morrison's private (leased, actually) railway car for their trip to Los Angeles.

Clay Morrison spends the rest of the day visiting soup kitchens, Democratic politicians, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

That evening, Mr. Ellis and company visit with the Fey, and make some arrangements.

''China and Japan begin peace negotiatons.''

'''Saturday, 19 March, 1932'''

Attached to the Lackawanna Limited, the private railcar leaves Manhattan at 10 a.m., bound for Chicago and eventually Los Angeles. Rep. Morrison gets off at Slateford Junction, Penn. about 12:30 pm, bound for Washington, and arrives there mid-afternoon.

'''Sunday, 20 March, 1932'''

Carl Ellis's group arrives at Chicago's La Salle Street station (333 South Water Street), at 7:35 a.m.; the private car is moved across the city, attached to the Golden State Limited, and departs at 8:30 p.m.

''The vernal equinox is today, at 1:54 p.m. Central Standard Time. The airship Graf Zeppelin arrives in South America.''


----

'''Clay's letter to the 1932 Gathering:'''

Saturday, July 23rd, 1932
Washington

Hello all,

I hope things are going well. I haven't heard much from Carl or anyone since March. I only have time for a quick letter now, I'm due at a committee session in half an hour. I hope this reaches you all while you're still all gathered!

It's looking pretty bad here in the States; way too many folks are out of work. President Curtis is very unpopular, and a month ago the Republicans chose Senator Joseph France, of Maryland, to be their presidential candidate. The original leading candidate at the Republican convention, Senator Blaine of Wisconsin, afterwards announced his support for the Democratic candidate, Governor Roosevelt of New York! France is a good fellow - though a terrible public speaker - but people are very angry with the Republicans, and are demanding that the Government do something. Since the Republicans took all the credit for the prosperity before the crash, they're getting all the blame now. I don't see any way that France can win, unless something unnatural happens before the election. He's already had rotten fruit and stuff thrown at him during parades and speeches since the convention; I hope nobody takes a shot at him!

There's a large camp of army veterans on the banks of the Anacostia River here; they're mighty upset about the economy, and about not getting a bonus payment promised long ago. Some people are worried that these men might be influenced by Communists or worse. The President hasn't done much either way about them yet. There are rumors that a million unemployed men will march on Washington in August.

Roosevelt has been promising a "new deal" for the economy, including a lot of social welfare programs, and ... let's see ... "a more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth." Of course, a lot of the plutocratic sorts are calling him a socialist, a communist, and such. Oh, and he flew in an airplane to Chicago to give his acceptance speech, mighty modern of him.

Roosevelt wants to end the selling-off of Indian lands, and he wants to put in John Collier as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; all of that should take some steam out of the less crazy folk on reservations. He's also chosen Senator Tom Walsh, of Montana, for the job of Attorney General; Tom and I get along pretty well. Oh, don't go letting on about the Attorney General thing, it's not made public yet. Tom's been in the Senate since 1913, but I've managed to get into the House Justiciary Committee due to some finagling with the Democrats back when I was elected - he's only on the Senate Committee on the Disposition of Useless Executive Papers, and I think it riles him some - seeing as how he led the Senate investigation into the Teapot Dome dealings back in the Twenties. Tom's sweet on a Cuban girl half his age, and is thinking of asking her to marry him. The Cuban girl, name of Mina de Truffin, reminds me of a girl I knew in Missouri, back in the Eighties - Eleanor, her name was. She moved to Yankeetown, Florida though, to care for her grandfather; he died in 95 ... no, it was 96 ... when a hurricane knocked down the house. Armanis Knotts - Harbor Knotts, as he was known - lived in Yankeetown, too ... though not when the hurricane came by - his mother was one of the Ohio Bells, an old family there. Margaret Bell had come over during the famine, with her brothers; one of them, Wallace ... no, wait, it was William ... set up the first steam-powered forge in the Western Reserve. Anyway, Margaret, she married James Knotts, and had five children - they had a farm of 80 acres, one of the children, David, ran off to work on the Panama Canal, as a steam-shovel operator. He got buried for half-an-hour by a mudslide, but survived; however, he gave up on the canal. Oh, where was I?

The Democrats also have plans to destroy lots of crops, and to kill millions of cattle, pigs, and such to stabilize prices. This summer the drought in the midwest seems to be continuing from last year - the Agriculture Department has some very frightening predictions for dust storms around October or November.

Lamont Coleman has him some important job over at the Treasury; I think he reports to the Surgeon General.

I've gotten Mr. Tesla on the government payroll, and we've set up an organization to try and detect, prevent or minimize whatever's bound to happen at Manhattan in October. There are some level-headed engineers, and some wild-eyed young kids from Princeton and Harvard, in the group I've put together. Tesla himself is quite a handful, and doesn't like being managed. We've set up a lab for him in Brooklyn, and there's a larger plant with a generator and other heavy equipment being built on Long Island, near the airfield at Garden City. Tesla's got a lot of theories and plans - that's the problem, sorting out the wheat from the chaff!

It's still very hard getting folks here in Washington to understand what's going on, and what might happen. There are more and more groups -- newspapermen, ministers, local politicians, officers in the Army -- coming to the government and presenting evidence, and asking what's to be done. You asked me to look into the Penthus Corporation back in March; they've been sounding out the government about what to do in the case of a big natural disaster. Fortunately or not, President Curtis and the Republicans aren't likely to spend much money on a national response to a disaster - mostly just have the Army provide a lot of tents and help with feeding people right afterwards, like when there was that big earthquake in San Francisco back in '06. I'd say if Penthus wants to have major government involvement in their schemes, they'd have to sound out Governor Roosevelt - he's talking about having jobs programs involving millions of men, some of them in large, isolated camps out West. I've been pushing the Treasury Department to look into where Penthus gets their money from - are they paying their taxes - etc. One thing I do know:  Penthus has been spending a lot of money to get chummy with the American Legion; building Legion halls, sponsoring conventions, putting senior officers of the Legion on the company payroll with fat salaries, and other shenanigans.

There was a big appropriation in the War Department budget that was just passed for Citizens' Military Training Camps. I haven't been quite able to figure out what the Army intends those for; it's possible that some faction within the Army is working with Pentheus, or someone else, to recruit men for something. Officially it's all just some preparedness thing with no particular person behind it.

There aren't any signs of Marklin's plans - whatever they were. So many calamities have happened since he was in Washington that whatever he was up to isn't likely to have any mundane influence.

The Army is holding pretty close to their sources of Ectochrome film, I'm afraid. But Tesla is working on some viewers that won't need film, and will let you see abnatural stuff as it occurs!

The issue of what's going on in Russia since January has the State Department and War Department pretty concerned, I can tell you. It's amazing how little is known about what's going on inside a country larger than North America for six months!

Have you heard of a fellow named "Father Divine"? He's an odd type, claims to be a god, has a lot of people doing what he says in Harlem. I ran into some of his followers while we were setting up Tesla's workshop on Long Island. The newspapers say he has a couple of million members of his International Peace Mission church. Is he onto something? Could he be helpful in Manhattan? Or harmful?

On the Judiciary Committee, we have seen some pretty unpleasant proposals for laws to establish emergency military tribunals - to create a Federal police force, or to make all police everywhere in the country officers of the Justice Department - to require national identity cards, and to prevent travel or migration between states without permission - and lots of other ideas for benevolent dictatorship. People are very upset about crime in this country, what with the bootleggers, motor bandits, and other violent criminals about. In good news, most everyone's in favor of repeal, by the way; it's pretty certain we'll see the end of Prohibition in a year or so.

Keep in mind that in January the Democrats will probably control Congress, and I'll be on a much less interesting committee.

Give my best to everyone there!

Yours,

Rep. Clay Morrison


----

'''Friday, 29 July 1932'''

After trying for weeks to get Tesla to come into the lab in Brooklyn, Clay's team set up a lab on the 81st through 86th floors of the Empire State Building, and built a replica of Tesla's rooms at the Hotel Governor Clinton.

The Empire State Building had backup generators, large power conduits (for the transmitters on the spire), and cheap rents (only about $20,000 for a whole floor for a year). Plus, it was probably closer to whatever terrible trouble would happen in October.

'''August - September, 1932'''

Clay and his crew of engineers worked around the clock to build Tesla's "death ray". A working prototype was demonstrated in late August; work began on the full-size version immediately.

'''Wednesday, 19 October, 1932'''

The Incursion -- malign alien forces attempt to warp Manhattan into a base or anchor for their eventual conquest of the Earth. Clay was at the top of the Empire State Building, and pulled the lever which fired off the Death Ray. The vortex forming in Central Park was destroyed!

'''Thursday, 20 October, 1932'''

* Clay attends some memorial services.
* Various reporters interview Clay regarding Tesla's Protective Ray.
* Clay Morrison meets briefly with Governor Roosevelt.
* Andrew Scott sets up a meeting in Manhattan between Clay Morrison and Marcus Dubceck, president of the Penthus Corporation.

'''Friday, 21 October, 1932'''

Clay surveys damage in Manhattan, and visits Father Divine's International Peach Mission Church in Harlem. 

'''Saturday, 22 October, 1932'''

Clay has dinner with Governor Roosevelt.

'''Sunday, 23 October, 1932'''

Clay Morrison travels to Washington, D.C., to check in with his office staff.

'''Monday 24 October, 1932'''

Clay Morrison sets out by train for his home in Carson City, Nevada.

'''Wednesday 26 October, 1932'''

Redland Jack sends a letter to Clay via Seelie Courier ...
 
'''Saturday, 29 October, 1932'''

Clay Morrison arrives home, and resumes his electioneering.

'''Tuesday, 8 November, 1932'''

Elections for President and Congress. 

[[category: The Stars Are Right]]
[[category: Inactive Characters]]