Many of you know my grandfather (Dadda) passed away this past sunday. Our family really appreciates all your thoughts and prayers in this time.

I wanted to share a story of something that happened today at his viewing. I met a man named Joe Price, who told me he was a play mate of my grandfather. Instantly my mind flashed back to a favorite story dadda used to tell about his younger adventures. Like most young boys stories, this one involved cowboys and indians. Dadda was the cowboy, who was chasing Mr. Price, the indian, around a fire they had built. (this was 80 some years ago, kids were allowed to build fires back then) Somehow in all the commotion, Mr. Price's pants caught on fire and it badly burned his leg. I still remember dadda telling me the last part through chuckles about how his pants caught on fire and he was jumping around hollering until they got them put out. He always ended the story by saying "and Joe has the scares to prove it" although I always doubted how true that really was. Maybe it's not that great of a story now, but for some reason I always found it humorous, must be the little boy trapped inside me always wanting to do something like that.

So flashback to today, when I first meet Mr. Price. He looks at me and says, "I was a playmate of your grandfather. He caught me on fire once, and I've got the scares to prove it." So help me I couldn't help but laugh. For him to say exactly the same line my grandfather always said just had me busting up. It's almost as if the two of them practiced it out to tell their parents back when they were 10. To add to the story, Mr. Price continued "and Julien didn't want to get in trouble so he just told me to come back to the house and he'd put iodine on it."

As we both laughed at that, Mr. Price regained himself, shook my hand good and tight, looked me dead in the eye and said "Your grandfather was a good man though, don't you forget it." Throughout the timeline of the day I must have heard that phrase a million times "your grandfather was a good man" but somehow, 2 hours after, all I can remember is Joe Price. I guess it's because of all the people I met today, he had the most right to be upset, yet he wasn't. I think that is a tribute to my grandfather's character. Despite such a horrible accident, Joe knew he was still a good man at heart, and didn't blame him for any of it.

Looking back on the timeline of my grandfather's life, and all the things he has taught me, and left me with, I can only be grateful for such an immense blessing. I have only begun to see a part of his legacy, and I feel small in it's shadow. I see how I am the one people look to, to continue his legacy. I can only hope to do half as much as he did, and use 1/10 of what he taught me, all of which would still make me a man far greater then many.


I miss you Dadda
and Joe Price really does have the scares to prove it.

I'm thinking about signing up for twitter, but I don't know if it's worth it. Anyone out there use it and recommend it? or is it just another way for my to stalk all my friends in addition to facebook?

the following is an excellent column from Newt Gingrich:

Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings are underway in the Senate today. A good question for any senator who is interested in being honest about the real problem in the Middle East is this:
“Senator Clinton, imagine that you’re the Israeli Foreign Minister: What do you do when the other party at the ‘peace table’ is openly committed to your destruction?”
This is the question that all our political and foreign policy elites who are demanding that Israel immediately agree to a “cease fire” with Hamas in Gaza should be asking. And this is the fact that the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic mobs that are taking to the streets in London, Edinburgh, Berlin and Washington, DC should know: Hamas is openly, publicly and proudly committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. This is a negotiating partner?
These are the words of the Hamas charter:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.

And here is how the founding document of Hamas treats the concept of “negotiations”:

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

There are two main facts of the violence in the Middle East that all Americans -- and particularly our leaders -- should be aware of:
The first is that Hamas exists to destroy Israel. Its leaders wake up every morning with one goal -- to eliminate what they call the “Zionist entity.”
The second fact of violence in the Middle East is the ongoing effort by Iran (using Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas as its proxies) to undermine pro-American governments in the region.

On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, President-elect Obama repeated his campaign pledge to negotiate with Iran. He also promised that there would be a “new emphasis on respect” in his administration’s dealings with Tehran.

President-elect Obama may want respect.
But Iran’s theocratic rulers want victory.

This is a dangerous mismatch of goals for America and a potentially nuclear, aggressor regime to have.
President-elect Obama has expressed a welcome fondness for Abraham Lincoln. To understand the regimes in Iran and Gaza, all of us should read more Lincoln. When the southern states began to secede from the Union with Lincoln’s election in 1860, Lincoln concluded that negotiating with the South would be futile. There were only two options:

To make it impossible for the South to leave the Union.
Or to allow the Union itself to be destroyed.

Lincoln choose to “preserve, protect and defend” the Union and 620,000 Americans died implementing his policy. But in doing so, Lincoln saved the Union. And the “mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone” endure to this day. Similarly, there are no easy solutions in Gaza. But there are a few milestones that Israel should achieve -- and the United States should support -- before any ceasefire with Hamas is granted:
1) Hamas’ capacity to inflict violence on the state of Israel must be destroyed, or at least significantly reduced.
2) No missiles -- period -- must be fired from Gaza into the sovereign state of Israel.
3) The border between Gaza and Egypt must be sealed and verified by an Israeli and/or independent verifier.

The policy of the United States of America has been and must be that Israel’s right to survive is unequivocal. Therefore, the greatest danger to Israel in the long run is for it to experience violence followed by a false truce which allows its enemies time to rearm and initiate yet another cycle of violence.

Iran and Hamas will not voluntarily end this cycle of violence. They must be brought to the point where they have no choice.

and this video proves it.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg4Njtmbb10

I've heard rumors around campus about this all week. Honestly I doubted it's credibility, and to an extent it still seems pretty far fetched. Is it possible that we all could have been duped by something like this?