Archive → April, 2008
Historic Photos of Oklahoma City
It has been no secret that I love my hometown of Oklahoma City an I am very proud of what it has become. We have spent years fending off stereotypes people have of us throughout the nation As our leadership’s vision continues to grow, our city reaps the harvest of those actions. In recent days the National Basketball Association (NBA) has announced that our city is at the top of the list for obtaining a new franchise after the support we have given to the New Orleans Hornets after Hurricane Katrina. Our dilapidated downtown. has begun to revive itself with new life.
With this new life, I wanted to look at our past and stumbled on a book by Larry Johnson, Historic Photos of Oklahoma City. Larry Johnson, a reference librarian for the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma City has compiled many historic photos of Oklahoma City and put them in a very nice hard back book with narrative descriptions of the photos. Some of these photos go back to the 1800’s and tell a story of the early days. Some of the buildings in these pictures are still there and they reveal the history behind them. This book is a walk through history in Oklahoma City showing the good times and the bad.
As most are aware, OKC has a long history with the aviation industry and one of the photos shows a primitave biplane flown by Charles Willard in the Capitol Hill area as early as 1910. As one that has spent most of my life in Oklahoma City, I learned a lot from this book. Many of these pictures are full page high resolution for their day. This book follows a timeline from the early days until more recent times so one can follow the history of our great city. I think this book is a wonderful addition to any collection. It is well put together and has a historic look that is even pleasant to look at in your library.
This book can be purchased through many of the large retailers such as Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Target, and Alibris. The book is published by Turner Publishing Company from Nashville, TN, and Paducah, KY. As a person that is very proud of my hometown, I would certainly recommend this book.
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Tags: OklahomaCity, photos, book, Larry Johnson, Historic Photos of Oklahoma City
Do I Want A Team This Way?
Call me naive, or just plain old fashion but I am tired of accepting dishonesty as an acceptable means for getting what you want. This evening I was reading a post on the OKCTalk website about the Howard Shultz’s lawsuit against the owners of the Seattle Supersonics. I began to see a trend of postings of fellow citizens of Oklahoma City stating that they did not care if the owners lied as long as they succeeded in getting a team here. This really bothered me because I really do not agree with this notion that lying to get what you want is acceptable practice. I finally had to speak up to point this out and was met with repeated defense of this activity for getting a team although they would not condone it for other purposes. I never claimed anyone lied but rather pointed out that condoning lying publicly is not good policy.
As I have posted many times, on this blog I really hope to get an NBA team here in Oklahoma City. I want to have a team because I want my hometown to get its name out nationally. Secondly it will give a perceived improved quality of life for those considering a move here. I am not saying the owners of the team lied or did not lie. I was simply posting that it disturbs me that we are so determined to be seen as a “big league” city that we are willing to not only lie but defend lying as a means of getting what we want. I was further chastised for being naive and that lying in business is common place.
I think these guys were missing the point. There is an issue of integrity at stake here and announcing to the world that lying is “okay” is a big statement that integrity does not matter. It is my contention that if a person cannot tell the truth, then they cannot be trusted. If a person cannot be trusted, then it does not matter what they say because they cannot be believed. This notion that ethics should not play a role in business is rediculous. These are the same people that wanted the heads of the Enron leadership on a platter.
We are all human and make mistakes. I am not faulting them for this but to announce to the world that “I don’t care if they lie as long as we get a team” speaks volumes about one’s values. I am not sure that I want my city associated with that and if getting a team means that I have to sell my soul then I do not want it. Let me clarify something about my beliefs. I believe right and wrong is based on God’s word. If God says that it is right, then it is right and if He says that it is wrong, then it is wrong. Lying is wrong period. Have I ever lied? Of course I have but that does not mean that I should not try to live right.
I will not accept that sin is acceptable because “everyone else is doing it”. Having numbers on your side is irrelevant to morality. One guy said on this board that he did not care if the owners “lied, cheated, or stole” as long as he got the team here. He said anything short of drinking babies blood was fine with him. Here is his exact quote…
“You know I would normally agree with you, but playing nice will not get us a pro team and I personally don’t care how they get it here minus drinking baby’s blood.”
Again, maybe I am naive but I do not want a team at the expense of selling out my morals.
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Tags: OklahomaCity, Seattle, SuperSonics, Clay Bennett, OKCTalk, lies, ethics, morality, God, Howard Shultz
NBA Comes to OKC
The ongoing drama of the NBA arriving or not to Oklahoma City has been a roller coaster but has finally happened. On Friday, April 18th the NBA’s board of governors voted 28 – 2 to allow the Seattle Supersonics to relocate to Oklahoma City. Our city has longed to have a team ever since the New Orleans Hornets were here after they came for two years after the big hurricane. A lot of what drives Oklahoma City people to support getting a team is that we have have received so much negative attention with tornadoes and bombings. This really is a nice place to live and locals just want to get some national attention that is not negative.
When the SuperSonics was purchased by a group of investors from Oklahoma City, they gave the city of Seattle a deadline of one year from the date of the finalizing of the sale to come up with an arena or they would move the team. The NBA has been pressuring the city of Seattle to get a new arena long before the team was sold to the OKC investors. In fact that is the reason former owner Howard Shultz sold the team. The new owners proposed a $500 million arena for Seattle to build and the legislature refused to even vote on it. It could be argued the new owners did not negotiate in good faith as the original agreement said they should. This argument was exacerbated by the recent release of emails where the owners have spoken favorably about a move to Oklahoma City.
Where this argument fails to hold water, is that this arena argument has been going on long before the new owners were even part of the picture. Even now that the deadline has passed by five months, there still is no serious proposals by Seattle to counter the admittedly over priced $500 million arena. By making this argument, I in no way feel the Seattle fans had anything to do with this. They are the victims in this whole situation and I truly feel for them. I have this in the back of my mind to temper my excitement over getting a team.
I as most here that I have spoken to agree they would rather it happened another way. Our desire to get a team of our own ideally would have been to get a new team with our own name and history. Hardly anyone wanted to take a team from another city, especially one that has faithfully supported their team for 41 years like Seattle has. It is this reason that the Supersonics name, history, records, and colors will stay in Seattle so when they get another team assigned to them when their arena issue is dealt with, they will keep the name.
Unfortunately for the fans, it seems to be a cut throat business that who ever spends millions of dollars at tax payer expense are the ones that win. As I enjoy the thrill of getting a team, I am also aware that we could be in the same situation as the Seattle fans at a later date. It is with this knowledge I have to say it is worth it as a citizen of Oklahoma City. I am painfully aware that you need name recognition on a national scale if your city is to ever compete for jobs and quality of life. Although there are many that complain that money is spent on sports franchises instead of roads and schools, it is very important to grow the economy. The economy grows when new jobs are created. More employer will relocate here if they perceive a higher quality of life. With a greater local economy, there are more tax dollars to pay for these projects. Having a professional sports team with national coverage helps to improve that perceived image.
When looking at the big picture, I have many mixed feelings. I feel sympathy, happiness, excitement, tempered with the recognition that what happened to Seattle could and will happen to us if we ever fail to see the positive impact of professional sports on a city. Do I think it is worth the enormous expense? Yes I do because I see large cities waiting in line for a top tier team for the same reason we do. It is more than just basketball and sports. It is an engine to put your city’s name in the minds of those all over this nation. It is an advertising campaign that billions of dollars could not buy. With that I offer my condolences to the city of Seattle with the request to understand my excitement. With a city as wonderful as Seattle, I am certain they will be back in the NBA very soon.
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Tags: NBA, Supersonics, sonics, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Seattle, National Basketball Association
Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed
Last night we went to our local theater to see a documentary by Ben Stein called Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed. This movie exposes the hostility in the science community toward anyone that questions Charles Darwin’s THEORIES. It gives many examples of scientists that have either been fired, lost tenure, or even had their reputations ruined simply for questioning Darwin. I have been reading a lot about this movie before it was released and how violently hostile people have been toward its release. To be honest, I expected protesters at the theater when I showed up after all I have read. It was not like that at all but I did see some people standing outside the theater with clip boards approaching people as they exited the theater. I have no idea what they were doing but I assumed they were people doing some sort of poll but that is purely speculation.
Of course I did enjoy the movie because I agreed with it. I already had my mind made up before I arrived. This movie does not claim any sort of connection with a religious group and did not even claim intelligent design (ID), or creationism was true. It just raised the issue that in the science community, the media, and the education systems in the United States a person does not have the freedom to pursue the evidence where ever it may lead. A scientist can pursue any answers except creation by intelligent design. It interviewed many scientists and even a journalist or two on both sides of the issue. The purpose of the movies was to expose that evolution cannot satisfactorily explain where life began so why not entertain the idea for the sake of argument. When the movie was over, there was applause in the audience that I perceived to be groups of religious people that finally felt validated. After all, I am from Oklahoma where God still exists and I am fine with that.
As I said before, I had my mind made up before I arrived at the theater as I am sure most of the other people there did. As much as I would like to believe that it convinced others to agree, I do not think it did. I think there are those that agreed already and those that disagree and both sides are just as firmly entrenched as before. In rare instances there may have been a few that were neutral on the idea and may have been swayed but those are rare. I think that this movie though I agree with it is similar to Michael Moore’s attempt to make these documentaries disparaging George Bush. There are those that already agree with him that went to see the movies while those that disagreed with him continued to feel that way.
Now I am going to get “religious” so this is my disclaimer. I believe this movie by Ben Stein made a mistake by taking the view point that it is not a religious movie. I have taken this argument in the past by trying to argue an issue without bringing my religious views into the argument and it does not work. Ben Stein admits in the movie that he is a Jew and takes a balanced approach on the movie so that he will not be seen as a right wing extremist. I have found that if you believe in God, you are going to be called names anyway so you might as well tell the truth and not try to hide your religious beliefs. I personally believe that this argument is a spiritual thing. In the book of Ephesians 6:12 of the Bible it says…
12. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
I do not think this is an accident so why hide it. Just like I posted in my earlier post I quoted John 15:18-20 about how you will be persecuted for being a follower of Jesus. This is something that is going to happen period.
Back to the topic of the movie, I did enjoy it and would recommend it to others. I completely agree with its premise but I do think this is just as symptom of a greater problem. Yes the Christian community is persecuted in the United States. Yes anyone that goes against political correctness is likely to be ostracized in America today. The big problem that all these issues are symptoms of can be summed up in Romans 8:7.
7. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
The world hates God and this should be no surprise. I heard a person say “Do not curse the darkness but shine a light”. This has stuck with me for many years as I know the temptation to lose sight of the big picture. It is easy to curse the media and education system and put them in the back of your mind as evil institutions. It is too easy to blame them and sit back and be mad at the world and say it is their fault. We should be shining that light and joining these institutions and changing them from the inside out. Imagine a world where we would have a say because we actively pursued these careers instead of being mad at them with no control. I may be wrong with this approach but like the moniker at the top of this blog says “This is my take”.
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Tags: Expelled, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, God, Jesus, religion, freedom, science, intelligent, design
Big Mistake
This evening I made a huge mistake by trying to run around the track at the local school. I have an office job and have not been running for many years. Now my chest hurts and I am having a rough time. I do not think I will do that again without building up to it.
I have been having a tough time keeping my Internet online since we had a thunderstorm last week. It comes online and then goes off line over and over again. I did notice that one of my phones has static on it so I disconnected that line from the circuit for a day to see if it fixes the problem. If it does then I will need to replace that line with some new wire. I am sure that somewhere along the line there is a staple that penetrated the line and water is getting into the insulation. So far the Internet is working great. It is getting late for me anyway and I have to get up early so I better get this posted.
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Is the Church Relevant Today?
There is an issue that has concerned me for some time and that is the church’s relevance in the world today. We now live in a politically correct world where the self appointed elite determine what is acceptable to say and do. Church and civic leaders have become afraid of these people to a point where they are afraid to show sin for what it is. These politically correct individuals are usually comprised of national media and their appointed celebrities. These people have learned long ago the power of the media and educational system in controlling the thought process of a generation that is too lazy to research things for themselves. The people of this generation have become too self absorbed with their problems and issues to learn about issues for themselves and have become too comfortable in taking the word of others in the media that are not necessarily neutral on the issues. Often times those in the media tell stories with a world view that is politically to the left, or liberal so their questions and answers are usually leaning in that direction. Too often in the world, the political left equals secular, or non religious and even hostile toward Christianity. The education system has become a place for intolerance toward religion, specifically Christianity.
We Christians often do not spend enough time in the Bible to know and understand God’s word for what it really says and find themselves unprepared to defend the faith when it is attacked. The media, and education systems clearly do not understand Christianity for what it is supposed to be but deals with it in a way they perceive it to be. They see Christianity as a group of people that are disgruntled and want to enforce their beliefs on the rest of the world. They see Christianity as uneducated and often responsible for the ills in the world. Any time someone of faith stands for a moral issue, the media fires both barrels labeling them as people of hate. They advocate legislation geared toward silencing the words of Christians often falsely labeling Christian doctrine as hate speech. They do it with a vengeance and the ill equipped Christian is often left looking ignorant and backwards. The media strategically pick issues they know are sensitive topics and use those ill equipped Christians as examples of how Christianity is dangerous and bad for society. A few of these issues are homosexuality, abortion, and the death penalty.
The education system is just as guilty in this. Most of them receive money from the government so they use this as a reason to silence religion because of their false interpretation of the religion clause of the first amendment. All these things are important but they should not be a surprise to anyone because the Bible even predicted these things. We should not expect the world to be friendly to Christianity because Jesus said so.
John 15:18-20 18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
The real problem is we Christians not being prepared to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mark 16:15). Even our Christian leaders are not prepared as I have seen. I have found that many Christians including myself have been content to let the preacher do the preaching because in my mind it was their job. I do not need to trouble myself because it is the preacher’s job. The preachers have become worried about attendance and growing their churches. They have changed their sermons from the full truth to the half truth. They like to tell what a wonderful God we have and how He will forgive our sins. They preach how Jesus died for their sins for the world but they neglect to say there is a responsibility of the believer to repent. There is a responsibility to attempt to live a righteous life. It is true we will never reach perfection while in this world but that is not an excuse for not trying.
1 John 2:1-3
1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our’s only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
We need to stop being afraid to point out sin fearing that our churches will not grow. I remember a conversation on the ham radio repeater a year or so ago when I was reading an article about a large church in Houston Texas having 30,000 people attending every weekend. A fellow ham radio operator chimed into the conversation and said “Maybe it is because they are saying what people want to hear instead of the truth”. At first I dismissed those comments as statements disparaging another church because it was a different denomination. I have since changed my mind and have realized that he was on to something. I have noticed this church spending a lot of time preaching on how God wants the best for people’s lives but virtually never preaches that Christians have a responsibility to live a Godly life. I am not putting this church down because I often enjoy watching it myself because of its positive message.
My point in all this is not that I think we need to bash homosexuals or people that do other sins but not be so afraid to speak the truth fearing what the world will say about us. We Christians need stop worrying if the world is going to persecute us because we know this is going to happen. We need to educate ourselves and pursue careers in the media and educational institutions to turn the tide. Instead of bashing these institutions and writing them off as lost, we need to become better equipped and join these institutions on God’s terms. What brought this important topic to mind was the fact that my own children and their friends who claim Christianity seem to have missed that being Christian means there needs to be a change. We have spent so much time telling them what a great and forgiving God that we have that we have forgotten to tell them that we also have a responsibility to repent and live Godly lives. Yes we will slip from time to time but we cannot use that as an excuse for not trying. It is sort of like washing dishes. Why would we wash dishes since we know they are just going to get dirty again. It is too easy to take that lazy approach and listen to the world and accept their argument that says it is just human to make a mistake so why try. We try because God says so. We try because it is right. We do not try because we want to follow the crowd because we know the crowd will be going the other way. We need to be relevant in the world today and speak the truth knowing that persecution will come our way because it is guaranteed. If you are not being persecuted, then you may want to check and see if you are following God’s word. Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: christianity, God, Jesus, liberal, politically correct, Bible
Stormy Week
For those of you that are from here, you know that we have had some rainy weather this week. On Monday morning we had a heavy thunderstorm with a lot of lightning. It took several days for my Internet to start working correctly. Then two days later we had a big storm system come through here and we got 3.5 inches of rain. I really did enjoy it though because I always love rain. I got a lot of school work done on the clock at work so that was nice.
The Internet being out kept us from using our IRLP repeaters this week. I was thinking that maybe we had taken a hit from lightning but it fixed itself. I am sure our provider took the hit and they just got it back up and running. I am dozing here at the computer so I better go. I only posted because it has been two weeks since I last posted.
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