Here's a Picture of My Son Sam

That's him on the right. The other two people are President and Sister Ringwood of the Korea Seoul West Mission.

Here's a Picture of My Son Ben

This is Ben on his mission in Peru.

Death of a Good Man

My dad died Sunday, June 24th. Here's my journal entry from Monday: My dad died yesterday. For genealogy purposes, it was June 24, 2007. I don’t know if it’s sunk in yet. It’s hard to have your father die. I keep thinking about him and all the things he did, and the places we went together and that kind of thing. He died of a heart attack, and I think that’s what it would have had to have been to kill him as he had a big heart. He may not have gone to church, and he may have actually turned against religion, but he was good to his family and he had reasons why he turned away from God. His life was mixed up in some ways, and I think those ways formed him in the way he was—kind at times, rough at other times, smart, yet letting reason and intellect get in the way of intuition and allowance for there being a God. In many ways he was heroic, but in some ways, he was childish. Like all of us, he had his moments of greatness–and his moments of blackness. I loved him, but disagreed with him on any number of important issues.
Dad was the finest hunter and fisherman I knew. He knew more about the woods and the wildlife in them than most people who have ever lived. He knew how to make things with his hands–he was a very creative person, one who figured out how to do things and then did them. I think everyone close to him has something that he gave to them that he created. He was generous, and thought little of his money, thought of it as a means to share good times with his family and others—not as something to horde for a future time. He lived life big and he lived life hard at times, but he was my dad, and by golly, I’m going to miss him.

The NBA Playoffs part two

It looks like I was right about Cleveland finishing off Detroit. Now the question is, will the Spurs win in a sweep, or will Cleveland somehow squeak out a win or two? Only time will tell.

The NBA Playoffs

With the demise of the Utah Jazz, losing 4-1 to the San Antonio Spurs, we need now only wait for the ending to the exciting Eastern Conference series between the Detroit Pistons and the Cleveland Cavaliers. My prediction is that LeBron James and the Cavs go on to beat Detroit, only to lose to San Antonio and the great Tim Duncan in the finals. I'm not sure about the popularity of this match up across the nation, but to those of us who are basketball lovers, it sounds like a great match up. And should the Pistons handle the Cavs, that shapes up to be a good match as well.

Kansas Abortion Doctor and Boulder School Fiasco

If you want to be outraged, check out this transcript of the Bill O'Reilly Show.
Here's the link: Dr. George Tiller Performs Late-Term Abortions for Any Reason
I heard the young girl interviewed who had been forced into getting an abortion by her parents. Talk about a profound influence on a life. Great parents she has. Speaking of great parents, in Boulder, Colorado recently, there was a mandatory school assembly, in which the panelists recommended that the high schoolers have any sex they wanted with anyone they wanted to have sex with. They also recommended experimenting with drugs, including ecstasy and other drugs. Basically, to these panelists, anything goes. If that isn't bad enough, there doesn't seem to be any parents in that town who care enough to demand the resignations or the firing of the school administrators who allowed these people into the school. Hmmm. More great parenting.
I guess my bottom line is that if people don't speak out, then, like the rise of Adolf Hitler, things continue to spiral downward (yes, I consider Hitler's rise to power to be a downward spiral in the larger scheme of things--something that could've been stopped in its early stages but wasn't). I guess too many of us are engaged in the latest reality show to make the effort to speak out against some of these things. Too bad really, because the world we get is the one of our own making.