As a young boy I watched Merlin Olsen and the other three interior linemen for the Los Angeles Rams dominate the line of scrimmage, setting records and sacking quarterbacks with abandon, week after week and year after year.

Later, after his 15 incredible years of playing in the NFL were over, he successfully transformed himself from a ferocious mountain of a football player into the gentle giant that he so aptly portrayed on a pair of hit NBC TV shows, the iconic “Little House on the Prairie” and “Father Murphy”. And then he went on to have an equally successful third career as an analyst for NBC Sports.

By all accounts, Mr. Olsen was as kind and considerate as any human being could be, even back when he was instilling dread and fear in the minds of opposing quarterbacks. It seems that everyone who knew him liked him, and generations of parents looked up to him as the ultimate role model for their kids - and that went for both boys and girls.

Integrity and humility are rare in both professional sports and Hollywood, but this wonderful man exhibited plenty of both throughout his long and varied career. Although he was as tough as nails and larger than life, he was unable to beat his bout with Mesothelioma (cancer of the linings of the lungs). Merlin Olsen passed away earlier today. He was 69.

Federal statistics show that in 2007 a whopping 83% of home schooling parents wanted their children to receive religious and/or moral lessons in addition to their regular coursework. And we’re not talking about an insignificant number of children either since 1.5 million kids were taught at home that year.

The curricula and policies in effect in our nation’s public schools in recent decades leave little room for Christian teaching and thinking. Evolution theory is routinely being taught as fact while Creationism is discussed only in negative terms. Almost as bad is the way the concept of individuality has been suppressed in favor of group thinking and adherence which instills within our children a propensity to grow up depending on government to solve all of their problems. Prayer and trust in the Almighty need not be considered.

With the federal government’s radical turn to the left since November 2008, I look for the number of home schooled children to rise higher and higher as more parents begin to look for Godly alternatives to public education, especially since many private Christian schools are attempting to become more “mainstream” in order to increase their enrollments.

This morning I stumbled upon an old Newsweek column from 1995 in which the author went into great detail explaining why the Internet would turn out to be a colossal failure. It’s quite an interesting read (especially if you’re in need of a good laugh). How could a seasoned “journalist” make such a bone-headed prediction?

To be fair, the Internet as we know it today was still in its infancy back then, and it would have indeed been hard to predict  just how ubiquitous and flexible the medium would eventually become. But still,… Well, you probably need to just click here and read the column yourself.

I guess the moral of this story is be careful what you write and predict, because if you’re wrong it’ll be around to haunt you until the rivers all run dry thanks to the overwhelming success of the Internet. A bit ironic, don’t you think?

The Internet has altered many aspects of our American lives in recent years, and now it appears that big changes are on the horizon at the Post Office because of it. The U.S. Postal Service has just asked Congress for permission to stop delivering mail on Saturdays, and few expect the reduction in the services they provide to stop there.

For decades the post office served as a hub for correspondence and package delivery in virtually every neighborhood in America, and for much of that time they were a de facto monopoly in regards to those services. But the rise of UPS and FedEx in recent years cut drastically into their package delivery business, leaving them more or less relegated to delivering the mail. And then along came the World Wide Web…

The proliferation of email, instant messaging and online bill payment have cut deep into the Postal Service’s core business of “snail mail” delivery, resulting in staggering losses that the American taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill for. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see many of America’s small rural post offices eventually shut down and mail delivery nationwide cut even further (perhaps back to just 3 or 4 days per week).  Such a move would potentially allow the Postal Service to continue serving virtually every household in the country while cutting their workforce by a huge margin.

The last couple of decades have brought changes to our American way of life that few of us could have even imagined just 30 years ago. Some of those changes were for the better, but some were not. And I predict that we’re going to see a lot more changes in the decades to come.

Most Americans used to go to great lengths to protect their privacy, and some of us still do. But even as they maintain unpublished numbers on their landlines and keep their names off their mailboxes, many folks nowadays willingly give up their precious privacy in other ways without even giving it a second thought.

Take a walk through the mall or most any other public place and you’ll see numerous people talking away on their cell phones, often at full volume. What’s more, the topics often discussed would have been carefully confined to a private one-on-one conversation just a few years ago. For example, while walking through Wal-Mart a few days ago I overheard a man telling the person on the other end of the line (as well as me and about 20 other bystanders) that he wouldn’t be coming to work the following day because he had to go to court to face a DUI charge. Like we all needed to know that.

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The last round of heavy snow that hit our area was preceded by some pretty stiff winds, but the damage they caused were quickly covered under several inches of the white stuff. Now that the snow has melted, the aftermath of the strong winds is absolutely covering our back yard.

Much to our chagrin, hundreds of broken branches have fallen from our large sycamore trees, and of course they are scattered over a huge section of our lawn. Every spring we find ourselves picking up broken sycamore branches for at least a couple of hours before the first mowing, but this year it will probably take at least a couple of days. Sometimes I wish our beautiful sycamores were mighty oaks instead!

Those massive sycamore trees with their beautiful and intriguing bark were a major factor in our decision to purchase this place instead of one of the others we looked at, and I wouldn’t get rid of them for anything. But it sure would be nice if they would stop shedding so much.

Somewhere along the way our schools must have stopped teaching civics. After all, how else can one explain the fundamental lack of understanding of our American principles of government? On pretty much a daily basis I read an article or hear an interview in which a person demonstrates unbelievable ignorance of our Constitution and workings of the government.

As a perfect case in point, I refer you to an article entitled “What Ever Happened To Candidate Obama?” by Katha Pollitt. The article is little more than a rant about the President’s inability to get health care reform passed in a timely manner, but the most telling passage reads as follows:

“Thank you, founding fathers, for setting up the Senate so that white, rural, conservative states with the population of Staten Island get the same two senators each as multiethnic urban powerhouses like California and New York. That little gift to the slave states of 1788 continues its antidemocratic work today.”

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If you know someone who has forgotten what America is all about, ask him/her to watch this video from ABC News. It just might make a difference in their outlook on life. There is no explanation necessary as it pretty much speaks for itself.

Imagine that you’re a 911 emergency services dispatcher and you answer a call from a frantic mother who’s infant son is choking to death. Would you be able to keep your cool long enough to help the mother on the other end of the line get the child breathing again? Now, imagine finding out that the frantic woman is your wife and the choking infant is your own child. How would you react?

Dispatcher Chris Scott of Olympia, Washington recently found himself in exactly that situation, and as you can see in the following video he did quite well indeed – even though he was still in training at the time!

In my opinion, Beulah Land is one of the most beautiful gospel songs ever written. Featured in the video below, the legendary Squire Parsons did a wonderful job singing Beulah Land in front of an appreciative audience at Heritage USA back in 1987. I hope you enjoy hearing it as much as I do.