WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS CLIP

What do you Believe??????

Are you a person of faith? If so what is your faith? I don’t mean religion. I mean deep down inside of you what do you believe. Do you believe in “get what you can when you can”? Do you believe in do unto others before they do unto you? Do you believe in past wrongs must be corrected? Do you believe in an eye for an eye? Do you believe in forgive and forget? Do you believe in being kind? Do you believe in trying to help others? Do you believe there is no God? Do you believe there is a God? Do you believe in life after death? Do you believe the world is stacked against you? Do you believe that there is always hope?. Just what do you Believe? 

There is a stanza in the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” This statement I believe is true. As we enter this mortality called life. every being is born as an equal. I have in my life had the opportunity to see many children born. Its a beautiful thing. In those precious moments, that child is equal to anyone that walks on the face of the earth.  However not everyone is born into equal circumstance or conditions. Some are born into wealthy families. Some are born into poverty. Some are born into freedoms and liberties, some are born into control and limitations. Some are born with healthy bodies minds and spirits while other are born with disease, crippled or mental issues. Some are born into families that love and cherish them, some are not.

It is interesting to me to think about all of this. If we are born as equals. How do we get past the differences that life presents to us. For those that are “born into privilege ” do you have an obligation to those that are not? For those that are born into difficult situations, do you have the right to demand help? Moral questions for sure.  I don’t believe there is one answer to that. I do know that life is trying at times and we probably have all felt like whats in it for me? Why cant I get a break. I deserve to be happy. Hopefully we have also felt thankful for something in our lives.

I personally don’t believe in a utopian society. I believe there is great benefit in diversity. Diversity of race, color, culture. Diversity of location and geography. Diversity of ability and weakness. But when we use these things to set us apart, or above one another. We lose. 

So what Do I believe? I believe that We are all family. Despite the color of our skin. Despite of where we live. Despite of how much or how little we make. Despite of well educated or how illiterate we may be. Despite we are liberal or conservative. You are my brother or sister. We all need to set aside the thongs that separate us and concentrate on how we can help one another to achieve the most we can together. Set aside power and dominance for being powerful in doing good. 

There is so much more that can be said on this subject. I don’t pretend to have the answers. Heck maybe I’m way out on a limb here. These were just some of my thoughts this morning.

Have a Great Independence Day

Tragedy, Blame, and changing the course of destruction

Tragedy, Blame, and changing the course of destruction

It is a sad state of affairs when we as a society debate and try to gain control by limiting freedoms and liberty. 

Time after time we have had tragic events where some one uses the ability to snuff out human lives as if to were some kind of game or way to gain notoriety. Human life has become a commodity that has little value. It is as if the perpetrator will do what they have to do to get the most points before they are eliminated, as if they expect they can re spawn  and continue to play. Great planning goes into the destruction of one of Gods greatest gift, the gift off life. There is no apparent concern for how their event will change the life and lives of all those involved, directly or indirectly. Each event ads to a hysteria and emotion as we demand that action be taken. 

We as a people come to such quick conclusions as to how to correct such behavior. Take away the weapon. Limit access. Legislate, regulate, punish. All of which will have some impact. But none of those will stop the flow of violence and hate, none will stop the individual that has it in his or her mind to do the damage. They will find a way and a weapon to accomplish their act of un humanity. Whether a gun, knife, car, plane, bomb, poison, fire, chemical, Whatever the imagination can come up with the taking of a life, either in mass or individually is a sign that that person has become lost at some point in their life. They seem to come from all walks of life too. Race does not matter. Gender does not matter. Age does not matter. The only thing that matters is that they are willing and driven to take life. 

The state we find ourselves in today didn’t happen over night. Yes there have always been those in history that had the tendencies to perpetrate evil on mankind. But it seems so much more prevalent today. Perhaps its the instant access to information  and “news”. It may be impacted by todays technology and social media. But I believe it has been more than decades in the making. We as a society have gone away from what used to be called traditional values. Values  like Work, Honesty, kindness, being willing to help each other, looking out for our neighbors, and on and on. Taking the time to talk to and with our children, letting them learn from life that some times we succeed and some times we fail. Teaching the principle to get up and dust your self off and pressing on with the knowledge that you might fail again, but you just might succeed. Learning from our trials and mistakes. Truly learning to love one another. Asking for the forgiveness of those we may have hurt in the past. 

More often than not we tend to let our cell phones and social media be the source of information and relationships. We let video games be the source of where we learn to resolve conflict, and if we fail we can always start the level over again. The coming generations values are being defined by who they interact with in a non personal way. You can be whoever you want to be on the internet. Cause they cant see you in person. 

In my opinion the answer, and it not an easy one starts with you and me. Sure legislate and regulate may have a small impact on some things. But it does not begin to address the core of the problem. We can blame mental illness, and circumstance. They are indeed culpable. But we still need to look past the exhibition of the symptoms and find out what is causing the mental illness and circumstances that cause these individuals to act. Again it comes back to you and me. 

Ask your self what can I do to change my life for better, how can I help my family and those around me to live up to their potential for good. How can I teach and help my children and grand children to know right from wrong. We need to define and identify good and bad. In times past what we call today acceptable was once considered un acceptable. Bad things are discussed as common every day occurrences. Language that once was only used in anger, hate and  in vulgar situations is now commonly used, as a verb, noun, adjective or punctuation.  

We can all see how these things collectively have changed us, our values and who we have become. May each of us look at our selves and who we are, may we look to help those around us. May we be accepting in our lives but not accept the unacceptable. Stop looking to other for the answers. The answers lay with in us.  May God Bless all those who suffer. May God give me the strength to help any I can, and may God forgive me my faults, and wrong doings.

B

Brady Holt an Inspirational Story

Brady Holt to be guest on the Coach Scott Fields Show

Utah State football’s Brady Holt: A gentle giant fighting for his life 

PAIGE CAVANESS on May 18, 2016 at 4:13 pm 

Christy Holt and her youngest daughter, Abbie Holt, were on the freeway in West Jordan on Saturday afternoon when she received a call from her son. Brady Holt had left their house in Riverton to make the trip back up to school in Logan to move out of his apartment and into a new one for the summer. 

The drive from the Salt Lake Valley to Cache Valley was nothing new to Brady — he had made the trip several times since starting at Utah State in January. Each time he arrived at his Logan apartment he would call his parents to let them know he arrived safely.

But this time it wasn’t his voice on the end of the line. It was an officer from the Utah Highway Patrol. “He said, ‘Ma’am, I have your son’s phone; he’s been in a very terrible accident. He’s been seriously hurt and he’s being airlifted to Ogden Regional Hospital,’” Christy said. She pulled the car over into a nearby parking lot and cried with her daughter, who had not heard the phone call but knew that it was serious and that someone in the family was hurt. “I knew it was my brother calling because it was his picture that showed up on my mom’s phone,” said Abbie, who thought her brother was calling to say someone else in the family was hurt. “Then my mom pulled off to the side of the road and I didn’t know what was going on, so I started crying. Then she told me it was Brady and I broke down in tears.”
 “I called my husband and I was bawling,” Christy said. “I told him ‘Brady’s been in an accident and they life-flighted him to Ogden Regional Hospital.’” Christy and her husband, Tracy Holt, arrived at the hospital around 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and were told that their son had a spinal cord injury, severe head trauma, and that he was bleeding and possibly had a lacerated liver. Two hours later, the doctors said that Brady had an 85 percent chance of not surviving. “We said we would go with those odds — 15 percent chance of making it,” Christy said. The doctors then did an exploratory procedure and found that Brady’s liver was fine, but that he had a fractured neck and four injured vertebrae in his lower back. The main concern at that time was still his brain injury. At that point, the neck fracture and spine injuries were mostly stabilized by the fact that he was lying flat on his back, but until the doctors knew there was brain activity there was no point in fixing his spine. “The doctor told us at that time to prepare for the fact that our son may never come out of this,” Christy said. “That is the most heart-wrenching news that anybody could ever tell you, to know that your child — and to me he’s still my child, even though he’s so much bigger than me and he’s 21, he’s still my child — that he may never wake up. We got that news and we were devastated.” 

 Christy has spent the past three days in the hospital with her son. Friends and family have stopped by to visit and spend time with the family. Brady played sports all growing up and decided as a junior at Riverton High School that he would play football for Utah State after serving an LDS mission. He returned in November of 2015 and walked onto the Aggie football team this past spring. He has been visited by former teammates and coaches since the accident. Christy said she never knew some of the things that have been shared with her about her son, like how he pranked a former basketball teammate by filling his bed in the hotel room with ice while they were on a trip as a team. In addition to the more humorous stories, almost everyone has shared heart-warming stories about Brady and how he was the first person to reach out to them when they joined his football team or came to his school. “You hope as a parent that you’re instilling those traits in your kids and as parents you think your kids are pretty awesome,” said Christy, who remembered that even from a very young age Brady was kind to his sister closest to him in age, Mikayla Holt. “But to see the outpouring of love and people reaching out to tell us a story or something he’s done for them has been amazing.” “He worried more about everybody else than himself — always,” said Tracy Holt, Brady Holt’s father. “He was always worried about how people were feeling and how they were being taken care of.” 

 Christy worried about telling her husband about the accident at first because she knew he would have a hard time taking the news. She didn’t know if he would even be okay to drive after he found out. She remembered how hard it was for him when their youngest daughter broke her elbow, so she worried that this news would be too much for him to take. According to Christy, Brady gets that same caring personality from his dad. 

 The three other children of the Holt family have been with their parents at the hospital since Saturday. When Abbie first saw her older brother in the hospital bed she could not walk past the door before she was in tears. “That’s not my brother,” she said. The brother Abbie Holt knows is the 6’7” 260 lb. pep-talker who helped her earlier this year when she was struggling with her dance career. According to Abbie, Brady would text her every day for a few weeks and give her a loud pep talk each time he saw her at the house until she got out of her slump. 

The pep talks from Brady were a common occurrence in the family, according to Christy Holt.

Two days after returning from serving an LDS mission in Utica, New York, Brady’s younger brother Justin Holt was playing in the little league football championship game. Toward the end of the game, Justin – who plays defensive end just like his brother – took a hard hit and was on the sideline crying, discouraged by his team’s scoreless game. “Brady knelt down by Justin and looked him in the eye and said ‘Don’t let that kid hit you again,’” Christy said. “He told him, ‘You’ve got this. You’re a fighter, not a crier. You’ve got this, you’re a fighter.” Brady called Justin a fighter, but since he was little, Justin nicknamed Brady “the giant.” According to his mother, Justin couldn’t pronounce Brady when he was a kid, so giant stuck with him, and pretty soon all the neighborhood and family caught on to the nickname. “It became ‘the gentle giant’ because Brady is very loving,” Christy said. “From a very young age he has been.” The family is waiting for now at Ogden Regional Hospital, after MRI’s and CT scans and little improvements, they are hoping the gentle giant will be a fighter, just as he told his little brother to be last November.

Utah Representative Mike Noel commenting on the Brain head fire

I love the honesty here....



Last week my wife and I drove from Kamas to Tabiona Utah. It is a beautiful drive if you have never taken it. It was amazing to see many areas that 60 -75 % of the trees were dead due to beetles and such. The forest is tinder dry and my wife made the comment if there is ever a fire here it will be devastating.
This is exactly what happened to the Brian head area. Several years ago we were at Brian head and could see the devastation the the beetles had on the trees. Locals and others wanted to go into and remove the fall, but were opposed by many of the "tree huggers, bunny lovers and rock lickers" that representative Noel so eloquently described.
Its time we took control back from special interest groups and agencies like the BLM and others that restrict the commonsense and good people that it impacts the most.