I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.
I believe honor thy mother and father is not just a good commandment to live by, it is good public policy to govern by. That is why I feel so strongly about Medicare.
I think politics is a dirty game. We've seen the sides that they take; we've seen the commentary they have had on my father.
There have always been men of all background and ethnicities on my father's job sites. And long before it was commonplace, you also saw women.
My father belonged to a commune, and the food was ghastly. My idea of food hell is the salad cream they'd pour all over bits of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It was just disgusting.
My beloved Elisa, my companion and wife, whom I love and revere, is one of the most noble of our Heavenly Father's handmaidens.
My father and mother were not that compatible. I don't think they had a good wedding night, and I was the product of that. We weren't close.
We are spirit children of a loving Heavenly Father who placed us in mortality to see if we would choose - freely choose - to keep His commandments and come unto His Beloved Son. They do not compel us. They cannot, for that would interfere with the plan of happiness. And so there is in us a God-given desire to be responsible for our own choices.
I was only fifteen when I finished my high-school studies, always having held first rank in my class. The fatigue of growth and study compelled me to take almost a year's rest in the country. I then returned to my father in Warsaw, hoping to teach in the free schools.
I just wanted to compile these stories about growing up with my father and I wanted people to be able to enjoy them individually, but also the entire book as a whole.
I don't claim to be a particularly good father. I'm flawed, let's say. I've certainly been affected by the experience of having kids... trying to be a father, at least. It's an amazing process. It's like songwriting: it's a complete mystery to me. I don't understand it - but I've certainly written about it.
There have been projects out there involving my father, but they've lacked a complete understanding of his philosophies and artistry. They haven't captured the essence of his beliefs in martial arts or storytelling. The only way to get audiences to understand the depth and uniqueness of my father is to generate our own material.
Before my father would open up a karate school in a particular neighborhood, he'd clean up the block - kick all the drug dealers and gang bangers off the block. My father was very clear: 'I've got guns too, and I'll kill you just as much as a rival gang would.' And he meant it. He was a man of many facets and complexities.
To pray is to have a conversation with Deity. This sacred and supernal communication with Heavenly Father is a divine and delicate process. This crucial communication should be conducted with great care and in compliance with sacred counsel.
The Hadley Street Dream is a tribute to making a vision come to life. My father built a compound on a dessert city block, he saw something in that space we couldn't see. It was years later the album was born right there on Hadley St. He built the studio I started recording the album at.
No one can doubt that the sufferings of the sober, virtuous woman, in legal subjection to the mastership of a drunken, immoral husband and father over herself and children, not only from physical abuse, but from spiritual shame and humiliation, must be such as the man himself can not possibly comprehend.
My father taught me Basic and rudimentary C, I learned everything else on my own, including studying computational complexity on my own. That's more a function of my age than anything else though - back when I was in school there were hardly any programming classes.
I was raised with traditional stories of leadership: Robert E. Lee, John Buford at Gettysburg. And I also was raised with personal examples of leadership. This was my father in Vietnam. And I was raised to believe that soldiers were strong and wise and brave and faithful; they didn't lie, cheat, steal, or abandon their comrades.
I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.
I picked up the Puerto Rican accent from my father, and my sister picked up my mother's very clear, concise, and slow Mexican-Spanish. So, when she does speak, she speaks with diction. She pronounces every word.
