Unbroken

UPDATE: July 17,2011

I just listened to a radio interview of Louis Zamperini that was recorded some time ago on the Hugh Hewitt show. I should provide a link but I don't have one right now. What a story and the story of the author Laura Hillenbrand is poignant also. She has a severe case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and is bedridden most of the time and rarely leaves her house. She has never met Mr. Zamperini but has communicated with him in a string of 95 phone calls, many lasting for some hours. This is a great American story and it ought to be read by anyone who cares about this country and its legacy.

I just finished a book that I came across rather by accident. It is entitled Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It is a story that is tough to put down. It was a hassle to have to work today because this book was in my satchel and I wanted to get at it. What a story! The book is based on Louis Zamperini, someone I had never heard of before but am now glad I became familiar with from this book.

This is not a Christmas story, but if you want to appreciate Christmas in a fuller way you must get and read this book. I recommend it for everyone. It is based on his WWII experience primarily but reviews his time as a runner, participating in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the cleansing and redeeming time of his life; a time that truly was looking like a life or death battle within himself.

Louis is still alive, in his 90's now and is truly an American legend. He represents that dying and shrinking generation of boys and girls that fought in WWII. It seems so long ago now, but in 1965 when it was only 20 years since V-E and V-J day I was 10 years old and my memory tells me that it doesn't seem so long ago. This book does not romanticize war but describes in clear detail the price that is paid when man fights man.

Our Christmas Newsletter

THE OFFICIAL FAMILY CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER OF JOYCE AND GREG OMAN

For the Year 2010

Yessirree, this is our attempt to inform you of our family and our shenanigans for the year 2010. I guess the biggest day of the year was 1 April. That day our son Ben married a Cache Valley girl just like dear old dad did. Melissa Kitchen became Melissa Oman on that day and they have been bubbling ever since—8 months now. They seem to be made for each other so we have high hopes for the future. Both are up at the old AC in Logan continuing their education (at least that is what people call what happens at Universities but I have my doubts) and working a lot—I mean a lot of hours. We are proud of them.

The 2^nd biggest day, at least up to the press time for this newsletter, was the day our daughter conceived another child. Becki is due within the next few weeks and it appears they did not put the stem on the apple. They already did that twice and it has worked out fine. We are thrilled to have a little granddaughter coming and we are praying the mother and the child will be healthy and well. Our grandsons do not have the foggiest idea, of course, how their lives are going to be changed. Ignorance is bliss; that is why Greg seems to be happy most of the time. They have a year or so I guess to adjust, but when all the little girl stuff starts filling up the house that could be the end of Power Rangers, Jedi knights and light sabers.

Becki is teaching her Zumba classes and stuff, even at the 8 month mark. It must be quite a sight. Kyle, that’s Becki’s husband, is about halfway done with his Family Practice Residency at the U of U in Salt Lake. He has been working different rotations and incredibly crazy hours at times. I wonder how they do it. Their home they purchased is cute and they are settled in nicely.

Summer was fun. We spent some time up at Bear Lake riding wave runners, beaching it with stuff to eat under the beach canopy. . The Pickleville Playhouse there was great and we were able to get my office staff up there for a couple of days.

Last January Joyce and Greg flew down to Arizona and spent some time with the Westergards, Richard, I call him Dick, and his wife Carrie. We played some golf and had a great time visiting with them. Other travels took us to Managua, Nicaragua on a dental trip. We made some new friends and connected up with some others we have made great friendships with through the years. I think that pretty much sums up our wanderings.

August brought the end of a chapter in our lives. Joyce’s mother passed away from the causes incident to her age. It had been almost four years since her husband had died. She was residing at the Legacy House in Logan. Her feet developed gangrene and it took her quickly. We hated to see her suffering body and mind. What a life she led and her influence was felt through many generations. She taught piano for decades and many of her students came to pay their respects. There is a generational hole now in our family, but the memories are comforting.

So, does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really know what is really going on? No, we don’t. But family, friends and memories help a lot during these most interesting, new and trying times. As we think back to the places we have lived and the places we have gone we feel so lucky. Chicago was a place where we depended on each other and on our friends. We had great associations there.

Sandy, just out of dental school, was a launching pad for us. There are so many memories from our time with many of you who are reading this.

Farmington is where we have been now for 15 years. We live on a unique street. We think we are a unique neighborhood, but really we are probably like thousands of places; probably like your neighborhood, where people care for each other in times of need and stress and in the good times too. We share friendly smiles, a hug, maybe a kiss and express our Thanks for our Blessings. No, we are not immune from trials and disappointments, from heartache and worry, but we know through the Providence around us that we can carry on.

So, Merry Christmas, Truly we mean it for you and yours. Thank you for your friendship and we truly hope and plead with Him that we all have a wonderful Happy New Year!

Love,

Joyce and Greg

Joyce is a great scrub nurse for the surgeons during our Nicaragua trip.

Wedding day. It snowed and was a winter wonderland.

Others Random Thoughts....As I Find Them

Robin of Berkeley bears her soul in this testimonial.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. The day has deep meaning for just about everybody. I include in this post the proclamations by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They are not only worth reading, they ought to be required reading and required pondering.

George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to "recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789.

G. Washington (his actual signature)

NOTE:

Shortly after the Thanksgiving Proclamation was written, it was lost for 130 years. The original document was written in long hand by William Jackson, secretary to the President, and was then signed by George Washington. It was probably misplaced or mixed in with some private papers when the US capitol moved from New York to Washington, D.C. The original manuscript was not placed in the National Archives until 1921 when Dr. J. C. Fitzpatrick, assistant chief of the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress found the proclamation at an auction sale being held at an art gallery in New York. Dr Fitzpatrick purchased the document for $300.00 for the Library of Congress, in which it now resides. It was the first official presidential proclamation issued in the United States.

Proclamation of Thanksgiving

Washington, D.C.

October 3, 1863

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution."

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book.

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

Nice People Are Getting Mad

Just read this.

Card of the Week

In 1964 my dad came home with a phonograph record that was produced by Phillips 66. On the cover was Stan Musial, "The Man". It was a record with picture inserts that one could follow along with during the record as Stan discussed hitting. I listened to it a lot. In 1963 Stan was in his last year in the Major Leagues. He played his entire career with the St. Louis Cardinals.

This article gives a great outline of his life. He is the consummate gentleman and was a fierce competitor on the baseball diamond. I doubt we will ever see anyone like Stan "The Man" Musial in Major League Baseball ever again.

UPDATE: And then there is this.

So Many Books, So Little Time Part 2

I posted 5 books in my previous post, that I think are important right now. I now follow with 5 more that I think are also important for a well rounded person. I realize that my list would be different than anyone else's but I was asked, so here it goes.

• You have to read some Jane Austen. My preferred is Pride and Prejudice with Sense and Sensibility in close second. Some may argue for some of her other works, but I am in love with Elizabeth Bennett
• Shakespeare. Hamlet, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar maybe Much Ado About Nothing. One has to become immersed in something from the Bard.
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. We could argue all day about Tom Sawyer versus Huck Finn. I would pick Sawyer every time. The story line is better, Becky Thatcher is cute, Tom is a typical boy. It is funner. Finn is more confusing and what is the Dauphin stuff? It just doesn't flow for me. It is more PC I suppose because it emphasizes Jim more, but Tom Sawyer is a better book.
• This may not be well received but Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner, a great story and I wish I was Gus McRae.
• Last of the list is one that few have read, it will never go nationally, never be on a best sellers list but it describes how we should live one amongst another in one volume. Approaching Zion by Hugh W. Nibley. It is a text on behavior in life and if society could live and understand it, it would be a better place.

An afterthought would be 10 Books that Screwed up the World and 5 Others That Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker. One could at least look at the table of contents and see what those books are.

Who Got Da Junk?

Well, 'junk' has become a big- pardon the pun- this week. Safe flying; well that's a good idea. But what does it mean to be safe and who is safe? For instance, I can guarantee everyone in the world that no matter how many times I get on a plane they will be safe with me on it. I could be carrying my .45 or my Glock 19 or my machete or my knife, and everyone in the plane will be safe from me. I guaran-dang-tee-it.

If the people who know me were to all sign an affidavit and attest to my trustworthiness, to my love of country and people, it still wouldn't matter, I am a perspective terrorist in the eyes of TSA. So, I wonder why we cannot have some kind of card, or something with a bar code that we could show the TSA people and they could let us saunter on through? Maybe we would have to go through a government clearance via local and state law enforcement. For example, I am English-Swedish descent. I own a business, I am involved in community affairs and professional organizations--what are the odds that someone like me is going to take down a plane? Zero.

Now one might say this is a type of profiling, yes it is and we ought to be doing it. I know there are people that look or appear like these guys that have been trying to do harm on planes. Well, these folks may still have to still be screened, but just think how short the lines would be if most all of us that would never do anything could get credentials to just let us through. The folks being profiled are no worse off than they are now, they still have to get screened. But the lines would be a lot shorter and it would be less of a hassle for them too.

Some say that is not fair. Well, I don't think it is fair that I have to be hassled along with millions of other people who I can just look at and know that they are not a threat. That doesn't seem fair to me. I think it is ludicrous to be patted down, felt up and all but humiliated to be able to fly. And if we see someone acting weird or looking like they want to do some mischief on a plane, well we passengers can take care of the guy.

And what if I want to carry a gallon of liquid or gel on the plane. IT IS NOT GOING TO BLOW UP! How about a can of hairspray in my wife's carry on? The plane will be safe, she can't hardly kill a bug let alone do anything to a human. And these grandmas and grandpas and little kids--they won't do anything--none of this makes sense unless it is evaluated through the lenses of political correctness and multiculturalism. We can do better and we have to do better or the airlines are going to start feeling it even more than before. Just a collection of thoughts, that's all.

So Many Books, So Little Time

My son-in-law asked me to name the 10 books he ought to read. That is a specific question with a fairly open ended answer. The topics are not specific; fiction, history, politics, religion, sports, etc. I have been thinking hard on this one and I have not come up with 10 yet. I have come up with 5 so far and I will list then not necessarily in any order of importance.

1. America Alone by Mark Steyn. This is a book full of grave and important information laced with some pretty good humor. I think it lays out the land on geopolitics and demography for the next 40 years or so. It was published in the fall of 2006 and nothing I have read in a similar vein is even close.
2. Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Here is the lay person's chance to get a great exposure to fundamental economics, a voodoo subject if there ever was one but this guy makes it easy to understand and follow--this coming from an accounting major who had a ton of econ in undergrad.
3. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. This book is a tremendous history of the development of Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This book won a Pulitzer Prize. If you want to have any kind of inkling what is happening out there with these guys you need to read this book.
4. This is a tough one. It would be easy to say The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith but The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek would be just as good in many ways and it is a lot shorter. The problem is once you read Hayek you will want to read Smith
5. Radical-in-Chief by Stanley Kurtz would be my 5th recommendation right now. It has been the book of the year as far as I am concerned. This is a dispassionate and disinterested analysis of the President Obama from his days at Occidental College to the White House. It is incredibly well researched, it is an example of better than 'peer reviewed' work. This one gets two thumbs up and two big toes up.

I will continue to think hard on the next five in the list of 10 and hopefully have them available next week.

We Are Not Parenting

I came across this the other day in Townhall Magazine. Bill Cosby gave a speech May 17, 2004 at the NAACP's 50th Anniversary of Brown v Board of Education event. It pitted liberals across the country against the famous entertainer. Here are some excerpts.
No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.
Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower-middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on....
I'm talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you don't know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don't you know where he is? And why doesn't the father show up to talk to this boy?

We cannot blame white people. White people don't live over there....

This is and incredibly politically incorrect speech, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson looking on, probably glaring at Cosby as he delivers a powerful plea to black Americans to seize the fullness of the American Dream. Then I read this. Obviously there are a lot of people who consider the right of procreating to be an entitlement, the results of which should be borne by the rest of society. I have often and still do wonder why this is so and find it unfathomable that the tide cannot be turned. Evidently entitlements are things we get to do or we receive without any responsibility. Without getting too crude about it I wonder what the savings in the treasury would be if people could act like humans instead of animals wandering the land and control their passions with the brains God gave them.

You made it, you take care of it. That would be kind of patriotic wouldn't it?

The Vote and the President

For some time the pollsters and the pundits predicted a pretty big change in Congress this midterm election. That happened. The question is why did it happen? The answer is probably 'many reasons, that's why it happened'. I would like to put in plug for a new book out that analyzes the President from his days at Occidental College to his efforts in the White House. It is entitled Radical-in-Chief by Stanley Kurtz. The way to read the book is to read initially Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, then read the Kurtz book. I concur with the conclusions of the author.

The book is a disinterested analysis of the development of the student, the community organizer and the politician. It is expansive in explaining his associations with different people, groups and their activities. This is not a quick read. It pays to think through the gordian knot of the progressive world of Chicago as it is intermingled with politics, university life and business. It is absolutely a fascinating read and a tremendous work by Mr. Kurtz.

The Mick

I read the new bio out on Mickey Mantle by Jane Leavy entitled The Last Boy. I have to say that the book is chock full of stuff; stuff a Mickey Mantle fan would love to know. But there is also a bunch of revealing things that wounds the hero image of the Commerce Comet. As a 6 year old youngster I became fascinated with Mantle and Roger Maris during the summer of '61. That was the year of the home run as Mantle and Maris, teammates on the Yankees battled all summer for the home run title. Maris hit number 61 during the last game against Tracy Stallard if I recollect correctly. That home run race is a story in itself.

The amazing thing about Mantle was how long and how great he played with pain--pain in his right knee from a freak injury in a World Series game in right field in Yankee stadium. He played in this pain for 17 years. He had other maladies, some social as you can find out in the book, but he had incredible emotional pain that he carried throughout his life. I include here the 5 baseball cards I have of the Mick. They are the 1962-1966 cards.

I have a lot of memories of the old Yankees of the 1960's. I couldn't believe they were swept in the 1963 series by the Dodgers. Mantle had been injured and barely was able to play a little in the series. The next year they played the Cardinals in the Series and lost in 7 games. Bob Gibson was too much. They Yanks looked old. After that they were terrible. Mickey played 4 more years. In 1968 he retired. In his last visit to Tiger Stadium in Detroit Denny McLain, the 30 game winner delivered him up a Little League type pitch that Mick hit out of the park. The league wanted to sanction McLain but he basically told them to shove it. The entire Tiger bench were on their feet as Mick circled the bases. The baseball legend really ended then. If you are a baseball fan, the book is worth reading. It can be caustic and kind of graphic at times and the Mantle family have some rather interesting things to say about it at their Mickey Mantle web page, but the reader can see what is happening in this story of Mick's life.

I read Willie May's bio earlier this year and the argument always has been who was the best. Mick says Willie was and I think I would agree when you consider offense and defense, but Mick I think was a greater offensive threat for most of his career and the Appendices at the end of the book sort of statistically spell this out. I don't want to delve in that argument much. Almost everyone considered Mick a good and loyal friend, a tremendous competitor and certainly one of a kind.

'Twas the Night Before....

The Election and there may or may not be sugar plums dancing in your head but I take it from my observations that when the votes are counted something interesting is going to happen. I have spent the past two years trying to figure out what is going on in this country. I have read a lot of books, commentary, research and opinion from many people. I have talked with regular people about their feelings. Daily I have observed the Government, in it's various branches and forms. I have come to some simple conclusions which some may not agree with; in fact I am sure some may not agree with them.

I have a pocket sized copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Considering them as the baseline of thought and understanding about our form of government I have read and re-read and pondered them. I am not a Constitutional lawyer, but I am capable of understanding the words and I am positive I understand the Spirit of the documents. I am convinced that the current Powers in Government and those who support them are totally inconsistent with that Spirit.

From that baseline I look at what we have right now. I have come to the following conclusions:

• Government is way too big, way too expensive and way too intrusive.
• There probably is not one Government Program than cannot be cut way back or eliminated entirely. (Education Department and Energy Department would be a good start along with almost every agency, especially the EPA)
• As a populace too many are nursing too long on the teat. IE, Entitlements are not Eternal. In fact, I don't think there should even be entitlements. The Declaration of Independence lists the entitlements or 'unalienable rights'.
• There is a morality that is assumed in our Founding Documents that has been lost on our elected officials and our appointed judiciary and on our people. Executive Branch appointments are overdone and "There should not be any czars in the USA"
• People's behavior matters. If you do something and the consequence is you become dependent on a government program, you are the problem. Get off the program, you are dragging us down.

The Government must come to the conclusion that it is allowed to exist by the People. It is not omniscient nor omnipotent. It's powers, particularly at the Federal level, are way out of whack and they need to be pruned. Government is not an Employment Program. No one's job should be safe nor should it exist just to keep someone employed. This includes Congress; their benefits and largesse are unconscionable. One example I saw this last Spring was while I was in DC. I noticed a garbage can on wheels and a couple of women with brooms. They were sweeping the gutters and with a dust pan putting the debris in the can. I wondered. Don't they make machines that can do this more efficiently? I've seen them in my town. Then it came to me; this is what one would expect to see in the old Soviet Union. We must be getting close.