Men’s Interests

Peering outward from behind a mottled screen of vines and leaves, the Green Man does not speak or sleep; he waits. His meaning and his origins are largely lost to time — the Green Man wasn’t named till 1939. We know, however, that this type of enigmatic figure was the work of artists, anonymous craftsman whose unsigned work adorns the crevices and walls of medieval cathedrals. This year we will appropriate the Green Man and the primeval spell he casts on our imaginations for a modern purpose. Our theme concerns humanity’s relationship to nature. Do we, as conscious beings, exist outside of nature’s sway, or does its force impel us and inform the central root of who and what we are?

Tickets to this year’s Burning Man will be made available on January 17, 10AM PST at http://tickets.burningman.com. The theme is The Green Man.

According to Larry Harvey there were some problems with ticket purchases last year. People logged on before the tickets went on sale and the system crashed. He says they’ve addressed the problem and hopes for a more positive experience this year. He says:

I really don’t want to be too hard on anyone. When you are isolated and feel frustrated it is very easy to lose your temper. But isn’t it ironic that all of the sturm and drang about getting there first, about competing with thousands of other consumers, should arise among a group of people who are dedicated to a non-consumerist event that is devoted to cooperation and collaboration.

If our first allotment of $195 tickets sells out, a second gate will silently slide open, offering another 10,000 tickets for $225 apiece. Finally, when the last gate is automatically triggered, yet another 10,000 tickets will be available at $250.

During the wait for your place in line, if your neck gets tense, if you begin to pound the keyboard, please rest assured - you’re not alone nor need you be alone. There is a place that waits for you in Black Rock City.

Join Parents Magazine and Beliefnet in examining today’s spirituality and parenting by taking this survey.

Visit MAXIM’s 2006 Hometown Hottie Kerry in this video.

From Three parents for Canadian boy | WORLD | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz:

A five-year-old Canadian boy can have two mothers and a father, an Ontario court ruled this week in a landmark case that redefines the meaning of family and examines the rights of parents in same-sex relationships.

In a ruling released on Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal said the female partner of the child’s biological mother could be legally recognized as the boy’s third parent.

The biological father, named on the boy’s birth certificate, is a friend of both women and is taking an active role in the child’s life.

My opinion on this child custody case sets me apart in the fathers’ and equal parenting movements. Many people believe marriage should only be between a male and a female, and every child should have one father and one mother. Fathers4Justice in Canada has announced they do not agree with this court ruling.

While I believe the rights of every biological parent need to be respected, I also know how much children benefit by having other loving, devoted adults in their lives. I believe if a same-sex couple has a child, and both love and care for it, both of those parents should stay active in the child’s life. The children in these cases deserve the protection of the law to have the protection of their parents.

It’s obvious to me how much these women love this child. They didn’t have the non-birth mom adopt the boy because that would have eliminated the father’s rights. Since I wasn’t raised by lesbian moms I can’t say what life will be like for this child. But I’m happy to see three adults who love him so much they’re willing to set a legal precedent to be his parents.

same-sex marriage child custody fathers4justice fathers rights

Here is a short Dads & Daughters self-assessment quiz. It’s a quick way to understand how well you’re doing as your daughter’s father. Answer honestly and add up your score before peeking at the scoring key. If your daughter isn’t school-aged, skip the 5 school-related items and subtract 15 points from the scoring key.

Sample question:

1. I can name her 3 best friends: Often - Sometimes - Hardly Ever

To take the quiz go HERE.

About DADs:

Father Resources

Dads & Daughters improves the lives of fathers, daughters, and their families with outstanding educational resources supporting fathers’ involvement in girls’ lives and advocacy for girls’ well-being.

DADs’ tools and resources help develop supportive and healthy father-daughter relationships. Strong, positive relationships between daughters and their fathers and stepfathers helps girls increase their self esteem, gives them greater opportunities for self-fulfillment, delays the onset of puberty, and provides many other benefits—including improving the father’s health.

More programs:

Daughters®: For Parents of Girls

Making the world safe and fair for our daughters by providing parents and professionals with the best information about girls’ needs and development. This unique bi-monthly print publication delivers effective parenting and communication techniques tailored specifically for parents of girls in all stages of adolescence (ages 8-16). An award-winning, highly-targeted, all-in-one-place parenting resource, Daughters blends the expertise of professionals with the ideas and wisdom of experienced parents–digested, filtered, and compiled in a compact, easy-to-read, take-it-anywhere reference.

See Jane

Gender equity has progressed in many ways, but male characters still dominate television, movies, and other media for young children. Since women and girls make up half of the human race, the presence of a wide variety of female characters in our children’s earliest media is essential for both girls’ and boys’ development.

See Jane seeks to engage professionals and parents in a call to dramatically increase the percentages of female characters — and to reduce gender stereotyping — in media made for children 11 and under. See Jane founder, Academy Award winner Geena Davis, says, “By making it common for our youngest children to see everywhere a balance of active and complex male and female characters, girls and boys will grow up to empathize with and care more about each others’ stories.”

From Mens News Daily Do I have a target on my back? Are we being ’silenced’?

I’m going to get a little personal today. Instead of writing about other people in the Fathers’, Men’s, Shared Parenting, Equal Parenting or Family Law Reform Movements, I’m going to share my own thoughts. Something has come to my attention, and it has me feeling unsettled.

I’ve been notified that most of my 50 edits in the last 18 months to wikipedia were “inappropriate.� I’m wondering if this person thinks the link I added is a for-profit site, which it isn’t. My website provides resources for free.

What concerns me most is that this could be happening for political reasons. Why, of all the millions of users, was I picked out? Could it be because I also promote family law reform, mens and fathers rights and shared parenting on my other sites?

Not only have my links been removed, but my articles too. I haven’t been able to find any of my additions. I think I’ve been wiped clean from wikipedia. I’ve been reporting on the fathers movement for 4 years…I think what I have to say is valuable.

In going back to the subjects where I’d left links I see new changes. For instance, under Fathers Rights, it now ends in negative dialogue about the fathers movement. They even took one quote Glenn Sacks did that was negative and added it. Where are the positive quotes by people actually in the movement? This article is now extremely biased against the fathers’ movement.

What about freedom of speech? Don’t they have a policy of being neutral?

I find this all very scary. I have also recently been blacklisted by AOL and Comcast as a spammer…for a website that NEVER emails anyone. Am I being targeted? Are the powers that be this powerful?

wikipedia fathersrights fathers men censorship

Millions Of Parents Miss Their Kids This Christmas

Fathers4Justice activists took to the freeways this week in Boston, Massachusetts, and joined Families4Justice in Vancouver to bring attention to the millions of parents and children separated by family courts. Photos.

Visit Teri’s blog on Men’s News Daily to see several videos of new Fathers4Justice demonstrations in the UK, the US and Canada.

From a single dad in the Yahoo Single-Parents- group, about a day in church with his daughter:

When she was five, I dressed her up in her Sunday best and headed off to Mass. This is the really long Mass a week before Easter. Of course she wouldn’t sit still through the long Mass and I kept having to whisper and sign to her to be still.

Eventually she had enough and when I whispered her to be quiet, she yelled “NO!� at the top of her voice. Unfortunately this also coincided with the priest asking “Do you renounce the devil and all his works?�

Everyone turned to see the devil child and the priest stared down from the pulpit and yelled back “YES!�

I had to pick up my devil child and take the walk of shame down the aisle and out of the church. It took me a couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to return to that church.

Being a single dad is interesting at times.

dad father daughter church silly humor

UK: It’s too bad being a dying man wasn’t enough reason for Kevin Feltham to receive the treatment he needs for his bowel cancer. Even being a dying father wasn’t a good enough reason for Feltham, 44, to qualify for Erbitux, an experimental drug that encourages his body to fight the cancer which has moved into his liver and lungs.

Feltham finally won his bid for the treatment on his third try, according to Derbyshire County NHS Primary Care Trust spokesman Ian Beaumont, saying “In this instance the appeal panel was presented with some very specific and significant information relating to the individual case and made its decision with those circumstances in mind.”

What caused the turnaround?

According to Sheffield Today:

Kevin’s son Ben, aged 17, who lives with him in Bolsover, is due to have an operation of his own in a few months’ time to remove excess fluid from his brain – and his dad wants to be around to support him.

From author Tom Hinton:

1. We want you to know how much we love you. Yes, I know it sounds mushy, but it’s true. I’m not sure why, but it’s hard for fathers to tell their kids how much we really love them especially when their bedroom looks like a disaster area. I know you must think we hate you because we are the ones who oftentimes make the rules about when you need to be home for dinner, or telling you to get off the cell phone and do your homework. But the truth is we really do love you. Despite the fact that we badger you to get good grades, lots of sleep, and eat at least one healthy meal a day, we still love you. Having said that, don’t think we’re going to get soft on you. We’re still your fathers.

2. We want you to know that life is very fragile. On the outside, fathers are tough and strong. But, every morning when we read the newspaper about some young person who was killed in a senseless traffic accident or some kid who got mixed-up with the wrong crowd and was arrested in a drug sweep at the nearby high school, we tremble inside. We know from experience that life is very fragile and we don’t want to lose you. So, that’s why you’re not getting that red sports car for Christmas. And, that’s why we don’t want you carpooling with Fast Eddy. And, that’s why we set curfews and dating policies that bring you to tears. But, we do it because we were once teen-agers and we know how fragile life is. We know that kids rarely get a second chance to recover from a bad decision about alcohol, drugs, or speeding cars. The truth is we’re scared of losing you so that’s why we’re over-protective. Prove to us that you’re responsible and we’ll let you stay out to midnight. And, don’t even think of asking us to stretch that to 1:00 am.

3. We want you to succeed in life. I know you’re not thinking about this yet because just about everything you need in life we give you. But, know that we fathers are always thinking about your future and scheming in our heads on how to give you an edge. And, while we’re scheming and hoping you will amount to something someday, we understand that you just want to be left alone, locked in your bedroom so you can text message your one hundred best friends to find out who’s going where on Christmas break, and if there are any parties planned for New Years, or who wants to see a movie at the mall. We get it.

But, remember what fathers are always thinking about. We know there’s another side of life once you complete high school. We know that it’s a hard world and life gets damn tough. Frankly, it’s a pressure-cooker. Society continues to raise the performance bar and the competition is fierce. You’ve lived in this neighborhood all your life. But, out there, beyond the security of this community, there is a tough world that is just waiting to chew you up and spit you out. We know. We’ve seen it and some of it is not very pretty. We know that fewer kids are realizing their dreams. It’s getting tougher to get into a good college and earn your degree, or be accepted into a trade school where you can practice your craft. It’s getting more difficult to land a great job and earn good money that will put you on the path to success. And, while money and a good job aren’t the most important things in life, we fathers know that they are close to the top of the list if one day you want to enjoy Consumer Christmas in the style you’ve grown accustomed to.

Tom Hinton is the author of ‘Leadership Lessons I Learned on the Links.’

Leadership Lessons I Learned on the Links: Book One