Quote of the Week

“Relationships are to education what location is to real estate.”

- Murray Banks

Because It's My Blog . . .

. . . I get to choose which pictures I'm going to put on here.

Jeannette dressed MelodyJoy up so pretty tonight,

I had to get a photo with my girl.

Dad-Daughter Time

Jeannette worked a lot this weekend on her classroom so I had lots of time with MelodyJoy, much of which consisted of her signing that she wanted "up," followed shortly by "down."

Who could say no to this face?

And finally, here's a face only a daughter could love . . .

Cutthroat Frisbee Golf, OIT Style

My staff at Oregon Tech got together to play a round

(well, eight holes) of frisbee golf today.

It was all in good fun until Darci unloaded a long toss
on one of the first holes and served notice that
she was a force to be reckoned with . . .


The whole thing was Angela's idea . . .


John put some body english on his throws . . .


We were all just glad that Sheri didn't hurt herself . . .


Trevor in the rough . . .


. . . but he recovered well and penciled in a 4 for this hole . . .


The final scorecard tells the story, though . . .

At the Park

I took today off so that Jeannette could take a CPR class at work. In between shuttling Jordan to cross country practice and Jameson to the dentist, I took all the kids to Moore Park because Jordan and Phillip had a church youth group activity there this afternoon.

MelodyJoy is a swinger . . . if you want to see some video of her enjoying (not so much) being on the swings, go to www.youtube.com and type muntzp into the search box.



Jordan and I played three holes of "baseball golf," which was pretty fun before I took Jamey and MJ home . . .

Quote of the Week

". . . designating those with whom we disagree as enemies is most harmful and most unchristian. . . . . We simply must stop seeing anyone, anytime, anywhere as an enemy. Period. Or as our British friends would say, ‘Full stop.’ Obedient Christians do not have enemies and cannot see anyone else as an enemy. Others may, and very often do, see serious Christians as enemies, but the converse should never be true. We Christians are simply not allowed to have enemies.”

Bob Briner, Final Roar, p. 28

Well-Read Melody

This video is especially for Grandma Muntz.

Palmer's Hall of Honor – Professional Friends

It’s time for another edition of my Hall of Honor. This time, I want to talk about colleagues who, for lack of a better term, have become my “professional friends.” No, this doesn’t mean that I have to pay them to be my friends. It simply means that these are people I probably would not have encountered if not for our connections professionally.

The two hardest aspects of this edition of the Hall are [1] knowing that I’ll inevitably, inadvertently forget to include someone and [2] dealing with the fact that my list of professional friends is probably too long to make for compelling reading. I’m not sure how to deal with the former issue without reading like one of those lame “thanks to everyone we forgot” tributes on the sleeve of a CD. As for the latter, I think I’ll begin by trying to keep my narrative brief and by breaking this into several entries. To keep things manageable, I’m only going to include four honorees in this post.

(Honorees . . . heh . . . right . . . like any of them are going to mention this “honor” in their resumes.)

Randy Comfort

Let me start with Randy Comfort. When I became the director of admissions and financial aid at Western Baptist (now Corban) College in 1991, I had a strong desire to see Christian colleges in Oregon work cooperatively to serve students. Randy was the director of admissions at George Fox University at that time and since Fox was and is the “big” Christian college in the state, I knew I needed their buy-in to make anything happen. I called Randy and he readily jumped on board to help me co-found, so to speak, the group we named Oregon Christian College Admissions Personnel. The admission directors at the seven Christian colleges along I-5 met regularly, worked together to promote Christian higher education and we even put together a drive-in workshop in 1993. It was a lot of fun.

Shortly after I left for Kentucky, Randy took a new job at Greenville College in Illinois and we continued to keep in touch, even traveling together on recruitment trips in Texas and Oklahoma (where we took advantage of the really high speed limit on the freeways!). He’s now at SpringArbor University in Michigan and even though we don’t have much contact anymore, I still see him as one of my first “professional friends” and a real source of encouragement.

Dan Crabtree

The first time I saw Dan Crabtree was in a workshop at a NACCAP conference in the early ‘90s. There was a discussion about academic scholarships and Dan, who worked at Wheaton College in Illinois then, spoke forcefully against merit-based aid and said all financial aid should be need-based. I turned around and, having never met the man, said, “You have no clue how things are for the rest of us in the real world.” Yeah, I was pretty mouthy back then, too.

The next year, at the NACCAP conference in Pennsylvania, I believe, Dan and I struck up a conversation in a dorm hallway and I think that’s when our friendship began. Since then, we have served together on the NACCAP board of directors, roomed together at several NACAC conferences, been in the Cora! Cora! Cora! fantasy baseball league together, helped guide NACAC’s Christian Fellowship special interest group, and co-authored an article recently in the Journal of College Admission. Dan has a keen mind and a surprisingly diverse background and group of interests. When it comes to dialogues about professional issues, I think we are like iron sharpening iron.

Martha Pitts

Martha Pitts has the ridiculously long title of Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management and Director of Admissions at the University of Oregon. When I moved into the Oregon University System in 2000, I doubt too many people would have wagered money on Martha and I becoming good friends. The small campus, conservative Baptist, button-down boy and his big university, liberal, Birkenstock-wearing, diet Coke drinking counterpart. (She won me over on that last point . . . I’m a diet Coke guy myself now.) I had the opportunity to get to know Martha through OUS meetings and when I served under her presidency on the PNACAC board in ’02-03. I rapidly gained an appreciation for her ability to articulate her perspective and to see all sides of an issue.

I also love that she simply is who she is. There are no false airs with her. Martha and I share a propensity for speaking our minds, though she is a little wiser in how she chooses her words than I may be at times. I enjoy talking with her about weighty issues in our profession, knowing that she is very knowledgeable and insightful. We can argue about these issues and even though she often is better informed than I am, she always treats me and my perspectives with respect.

Greg Vaughan

I thought about only having three new “inductees” in this Hall of Honor “class,” but my friend, Greg Vaughan, was sorely disappointed (and rightly so) when he was left off my last list of honorees so I told him to be patient, he would show up in the next edition.

I got to know Greg, who is the Senior Director of Enrollment Management at Biola University in California, first through service on the NACCAP board and later in the Cora! Cora! Cora! fantasy baseball league, where he justifiably bears the nicknames “His Royal Smugness” and “Eeyore.”

Greg is just a great guy working at a great school. I value the fact that we can occasionally share our frustrations, challenges and concerns with each other. And it meant a lot to us when he made our home one of the stops on their cross-country family trip when we lived in Kentucky (but only because he didn’t have any friends except us between Indiana and New York, I suspect). Greg is still bitter that I let him fly Jeannette and me all the way to LA to interview for the financial aid director position a few years ago, only to say we weren’t interested even before we returned home. What he refuses (yes, refuses) to appreciate is the fact that no one else could have convinced me to even consider that opportunity.

To read about other members of the Palmer’s World Hall of Honor, go to my posts from March 21, 2005 and June 29, 2006.

Great Moments in Parenting History

This morning, I asked our 10-year-old, Jameson, to vacuum some of the house. He was none too happy about this and I had to repeatedly prod him to finish the job and to do it right.

When he got done, I sat down next to him on the couch and said that when someone gives you a job, it's good to ask "would you like me to also do this?," to work faster than they expect you do and to not grumble. No matter what happens, you’re going to have to do the work, but when you do it right and with the right attitude, that’s when you win someone’s appreciation. I was gentle with him but, nonetheless, I was getting in his face.

I stopped and he was quiet for a moment then simply said, "Thanks for the advice, Dad."

Wow. Does parenting get any better than that? What a great kid.

Stack 'em High

Quote of the Week

“God loves us as we are, not as we should be. Because no one is as they should be.”

- Brennan Manning

A Message from Maoming, China

I'm a member of a Yahoo group specifically for families who have adopted from the Maonan Social Welfare Institute, MelodyJoy's orphanage. One dad recently sent an e-mail saying that he met with the new director of the orphanage and that he was very interested in hearing how children from there are doing. I sent a short e-mail and some pictures of our Nan Cai Jing to him. Today, I got the following e-mail from him, which was very cool:

Dear Palmer Muntz

I am Director Huang. It is my presure to hear from you! We are very happy to know that she has taken so much joy to you and the people in the town love her so much! We have share her photos with the nannies, and we are all very happy to know her growing joy! Hope she will have a good time with her three brothers! Best wishes to you!

Sincerely,
Huang Qingsheng














Exterior of the Maonan SWI, August 2006

Amazing Grace, Part 2

On June 1, I put up a post called "Amazing Grace." This story continues and remains amazing. Whitney Cerak, the 19-year-old Taylor University student who was wrongly identified as a dead college classmate after a van crash and who was hospitalized for five weeks before the mistake was discovered, has continued to heal and now has for the first time put a post in "her" blog at www.whitneycerak.blogspot.com. All previous posts had been written by family members.

Incredibly, Whitney is ready to return to Taylor in the next few weeks. In her blog, she wrote:

"When I found out that five other people were killed in the accident I was really sad. I can vaguely remember part of the ride back to Taylor. We were all laughing and having a good time. I feel so badly for the other families. I don’t know why this all happened, but the only good thing about all of this is that the message of God was heard in a powerful way. I know my experience is different from everyone else’s but God has taught me He is FAITHFUL because He is with us every step of the way, even in the hardest times of our lives. And it is clear that He has been with me the last few months. My recovery has been hard work, but I thank God for healing me in every way."

Again, pretty amazing.

The story has received worldwide coverage in the press and I spotted it most recently on AOL News. There, readers can post their own comments about the news report. While many folks put up sympathetic, incredulous or encouraging notes, it's incredible to see how many morons there are who just don't get it. It's a sad, sick world where people would respond to a story like this with comments such as "I'd do them" or "I smell lawsuit." Fortunately, the genuine, sincere expressions of hope and faith from Whitney and her family, as well as the Van Ryns, sets a stark contrast to these cynical, ignorant comments.

Melody Bursts Jeannette's Bubble

MelodyJoy loves it when Jeannette blows bubbles with her gum. She even tries to bite the bubble when it's there in front of her face. If you watch the video above closely, you can see on her forehead the remainder of her mosquito bites from last weekend (which looked like little devil horns poking through earlier this week) and a fresh bump from a tumble on the back porch this evening.

Melody Bursts Jeannette's Bubble Video

Reviews

A Restaurant Review and a Movie Review . . .

First, on Friday night, we found ourselves down one child (Phillip was on a sleepover) so we deposited Jameson at the Muellers and left MelodyJoy home with Jordan. Date night! But we had no idea what to do with our freedom. As we left our neighborhood, Jeannette spotted the newly renamed and reopened Bel Tramonto. I ate there in its former incarnation six years ago when I was interviewing at OIT, being told that it was Klamath Falls' nicest restaurant. Which some people would say isn't that high an honor. I wasn't that impressed but, then again, I was on a job interview so it wasn't exactly the most relaxing of scenarios.

So, on a whim, we pulled into Bel Tramonto. Without going into detail about each and every aspect of the dining experience, let me just say that there is no doubt in my mind that this is indeed the nicest restaurant in Klamath Falls and while not the "fanciest," perhaps the nicest restaurant I've ever eaten at. The service was very good. The food had fancy names but the service staff didn't come off snooty or superior as they explained the dishes to you. We ate light and it still was perhaps the most expensive dinner that we've ever had. We shared a vegetable and ham lasagna plate that was different than any lasagna I've ever had. Then Jeannette had a lobster dish with, of all things, a chicken sausage and I went for the steak, with awesome baby carrots on the side. Everything was very fresh, well prepared and delicious.

The restaurant grows some of its own spices and vegetables "right out back."

Even though it was a very expensive dinner, it was still very enjoyable and I'd gladly go there again, which is saying something. If you go, be prepared, though: A four course meal will easily hit $50 per person, without drinks. I'm sure we won't make a habit of dining there often but I'm looking for an excuse to try Bel Tramonto again before too long.

Second, today I took Jordan to see the new movie, World Trade Center. The reviews I had seen and read for it were very good. It's clearly not intended to be "entertaining," but at the same time, it is not a depressing movie or even particularly difficult to watch for the most part. I appreciated the fact that it wasn't melodramatic or overstated, nor did they try to paint the characters as larger than life or unduly heroic. For instance, when Nicholas Cage's character asked for volunteers to enter the Towers, his men hesitated and only a few stepped forward. The former Marine who found the two buried Port Authority cops was a little cartoonish, but I had the feeling that he was accurately representing his real life counterpart.

The heroes in this movie, in my mind, are the people who actually burrowed down into the rubble to drag the policemen to safety. I'm sure it was a situation where "you do what you gotta do," but it still had to take a lot of courage to crawl down there.

It's been a long time since I've been at a movie where the audience applauded at the end. In fact, I think the last time might have been at Rocky III, two decades ago. I'm not sure that this is a great movie but it's a good one and worth seeing, at least on video. I hope I can see United 93 soon and I suspect that I'll like it even better. World Trade Center will bring a lump to your throat more than once, though.

Quote of the Week

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly,
while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato

I'm not sure that Plato quite got it right . . . probably we all need laws just so we know what is expected of us. However, I'll admit that one of my frustrations in working at a public university is all the rules we have to follow related to travel and finance. It seems like many of these policies have been written to protect against the most incompetent, most dishonest employee that could be found at any level of state government in any state agency. I appreciate the need to guard the public's interest and care for our limited resources. Common sense, however, has been thrown out the window and replaced with mindless micromanagement, which often costs us time and energy (and therefore, in a roundabout way, money) that could be better devoted to other efforts. Ah, the joys of bureaucracy.

Melody Loves Her Chocolate

A video that only grandparents and other close relatives will care about.

Sweet Sixteen

Today was Jordan's 16th birthday. He spent most of the day working with our youth pastor, Aaron Knapp, on renovating his house. (When we say "renovating," picture "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," except without the crew of hundreds, the trip to Disneyworld, the gigantic budget. This is more like rebuilding a house than it is remodeling one.) We're very proud of how Jordan is both developing a strong work ethic and learning a lot about construction. He has worked some long days with Aaron and others, and still has kept up on his training for cross country.

His birthday gifts this year included a cordless drill and hammer (also cordless), which was very exciting to Jordan. He was also excited to get his first Leatherman, from Aunt Laura and Uncle Jamey.

We felt bad that we hadn't really planned anything big for this big birthday. No party or anything. But Jeannette bought some tri-tip steak from Dick Howard's and barbequed it up, and served it with some awesome corn-on-the-cob and pasta. It was one of the best dinners I've had in a long time, including some pretty good eatin' while I was in Denver.

Dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and vanilla ice cream, finished off the meal. It will come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads this blog, but MelodyJoy stole the show at this point. When we celebrated her first birthday in April, MJ really wasn't eating solid foods yet. Now she'll eat anything and, needless to say, chocolate cake meets with her approval. It took Jeannette and me a good half hour to get everything cleaned up afterwards.

Good Grief . . . Another First

I guess one of the great things about being 15 months old is that everything's new. Last week it was the ocean and the lake, this weekend, it was MelodyJoy's first camping trip. Jeannette took all four kids up to Lake of the Woods for the annual camping weekend with a bunch of friends from church.

How much I dislike camping has become a well-worn joke amongst our friends. I enjoy being with everyone but the dirt and the inconvenience more than detract from any positives. The boys and Jeannette love it, though. They had their first fishing experience with the Muellers. (Jordan caught a perch, and will quickly tell you about the ones that got away.) Melody loved playing in the lake, though she slept in Jeannette's lap during her turn in the kayak.

I couldn't get up to the lake until Saturday because I was at OIT's student affairs directors retreat at Yamsi Ranch. Jeannette suggested that I bring Melody home last night, rather than spending the night with the family. Hmmmm, tough decision . . . a sleepless night on the ground in chilly nightime, mountain air or a nice quiet night in my own comfortable, clean bed. So after a great dinner of Dick Howard's tri-tip steak, Melody's first camping trip came to an early close as we left Jeannette and the boys behind and came home.

Jameson hides out in the tent.

MJ signals Mom for "more" chocolate.


Jordan's first fish ever!

Quote of the Week

“Extraordinary colleges leverage data to state their successes. Common colleges use anecdotes. Still others bombard people with opinion.”

Ray Taylor
President, Association of Community College Trustees
President Emeritus, American Association of Community Colleges

(Editor's Note: 95% of OIT's 2005 graduates were in career-related jobs within six months of graduation, with an average starting salary of over $45,000.)