Merry Josephmas

Today, around the world, people will take a moment to consider St. Joseph — for many the real first father. For the remainder of the year, he comes to the fore only when people who want to sell a house. bury him in the ground (often head first and via a kit).

It just doesn't seem right somehow. Maybe we should hold off all the hoopla of the day until we get to the Feast of St. Joseph, March 19?

Record Steppers

Although daddy-daughter dances are held throughout the year [Earlier: Daddy-Daughter (Never Dirty) Dancing; Daddies, Daughters, Danger and Love], it is the run-up to Valentines Day that has become the time to make the big statement. In the spirit of the big love, there was a gathering of 1,000 in Notre Dame, Ind., And this would seem a pretty big deal until one drifts south to the town of Frisco, Texas, (a bit north of Dallas, slightly southwest of McKinley) where 6,000 cowpops and cowgirls kicked up their boots together, setting the record as far as we can tell, although nominations for bigger celebrations are welcome.

Daddies their little girls.

A King's Pop

Before there was the son, there was the father. So, as people celebrate a day specifically celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., let them not forget Sr., the source of his inspiration and direction. This week's objet d'eBay, a photo of the man born Michael King in 1987, is a small reminder of "Daddy King."

New Year, Every Year Wishes

The year ends, but the wish for fathers and their children remains evertrue:

Celebrate your dad. Wear his gun ...



Just don't turn into the "old bastard"



Happy, Healthy New Year.

Brandishing Lessons

Everyone knows that included in a father's responsibilities is teaching important life lessons to his children. Still, there is a certain art to teaching and not every dad has mastered it. Sometimes, even when the lesson is a good one, the delivery keeps it from being learned.

For instance, the Widness (UK) wonderer David Flynn was seemingly trying to explain how much pain the problems presented by his daughter and ex- were causing him. However, it was really not a well-thought plan to snatch up a sword and swing it about in a room with an 18-month-old baby and two other young children while threatening to literally demonstrate the stabbing pain they were giving him. Surely, with thought — and probably a bit less alcohol imbibing — Mr. Flynn could have made his point in a more readily grasped manner.

Similarly, kids should be careful with guns. Obviously, they have no idea of the pain that can be caused or the potential consequences of something fired ... even a bit of metal as tiny as a pellet. So we must take a moment to praise Palm Beach's Christopher Cady for disciplining his son after the latter shot his autistic cousin in the backside with his Christmas present. However, with that moment passed, it is important to point out that shooting his son in the chest to demonstrate the pain has proven an unsuccessful teaching moment unless dad was focused on teaching how one can get hauled off to the slammer for shooting someone, even with an air rifle.

Both instance do bring to mind one of the most important things fathers can teach. "It seemed like a good idea at the time" doesn't make it the right thing to do ....

Christmas Gifts

At this time of year, the cliché "I couldn't think of a better gift" gets enough overplay to last a year, if not a lifetime. Still, it is pretty hard to think of children being returned to their fathers from difficult circumstances without getting at least a tad misty-eyed.

Merry Christmas to the Wichita, Kansas, father who was careless enough to leave his son in a parked and running truck. Fortunately, the someone who came along and snatched the truck before realizing the 10-year-old was in it told the kid to get out ... which he did before walking back to report to his dad that the truck was stolen.

And Merry Christmas to Dick Dekker, who had his daughter put in his care rather than social services. Laura, 14, had run away when told she was not going to be able to sail solo around the world. As he should, he's agreed to help her work through a court-ordered period of study and preparation before she — with his blessing — takes to see how she can sea.

And, finally, the veriest, merriest of Christmases to New Jerseyite David Goldman, who has spent five years without his son. [Earlier: Cooking Rights and Responsibilities] A Brazilian court has ordered the politically well connected step-family his ex-wife married into while still married to him to return Goldman his son, Sean.

Cliché alert: 'tis the season.

Who's My Daddy?!?!

Saturday, Nov. 21, was National Adoption Day in the United States. Fathers and their children celebrated in Olathe (Kansas), Plattsburgh (New York), Dallas (Texas), Rockford (Illinois) ....

Pretty much across the country EXCEPT (we are pretty sure) for one household in LA, where the joy of adoption and love of a child for the parents who took him in has had a dark cloud cast over it. Matthew Roberts, 41, went in search of his biological father only to find his genes are those of satanic crazy Charles Manson. Happy NAD, indeed.

Halloweenies

Every year I give Things 1 and 2 the same answer when they ask what I'll be for Halloween: "I will be a noyed." (Annoyed. They don't ask that much anymore, if the truth be told ... the joke wore thin probably even before I first told them.)

Dressing to excess and demanding bad candy isn't for everyone — me, for instance. However, there was the good point years ago when I got to see how happy it made T1 and T2. It has been many years since they wanted to hallowander with me ... but I don't think that's what turned me against the holiday.

Of course, not everyone agrees with my take. There are dads who embrace the holiday like a seasonal hadj. There are others who like it all, except for the costumes in extraordinary poor, bad, and even execrable taste.

And then there are dads who, at least according to actor, director, writer, producer Sky Soleil, take the family pranks to places it should not go. In short, fathers, never make your kids fear to lose face when they tell the story of "How My Dad Killed Dracula."

Working on a Holiday

Some jobs are better than others when you have to work on Fathers' Day. Playing tennis would seem to be one of them. A shout out then — on FD, as celebrated on September's first Sunday in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea — to Aussie Lleyton Hewitt, father of Mia Rebecca and Cruz Lleyton, as he takes on new father of twins, Swiss Roger Federer [Earlier: Ace] today in the US Open Round of 16.

Let It Rest

Oops. Almost let slip by the annual revelation — times to run before and on father's day — throughout much media that there are such things at fathers who choose to raise kids (aka, stay at home dads, SAHDs).

A new wrinkle on an old story this year came from the whiny father (NB: not WD) who said what would really warm his heart's cockles would be for his wife to help the kids make him a schlocky art project for father's day. More traditional is the reporter who writes like an amazed anthropologist about a father who finds himself by loving his children and not acting like robotman at work. And then, of course, there's the trend piece of daddies who prove just as capable as mommies.

Once again, what's needed is some daditude and the best (as almost always) taken on sacharine (or over-) looks at fathers comes from Daddy Dialectic, this year on the FD Daddy Shift Quiz.

And now we can put FD 2009 to rest. Amen.

And Now a Whole Month ... whoopitdeedoo

Where can one go to cash in a month? This is the dilemma now that the governor of Wisconsin has declared all of June ours.

FAB u Lo Us ... fathers don't just have a day, but now a whole month in which to receive faintly acted upon words-of-praise and tchochkes. The best one dad — who really should know better — could do for his father was to pen a paean in a newspaper column ending with "you da man!" I hate to be rude, but bleecccchhhh!

It is true that times are changing. For example, the folks at DadLabs [Earlier: Qs&As with DoDads - DadLabs] get some nice press in a USA Today article on different approaches to dadding, and receive it more for their serious approach to being a dad than their non-serious approach to dispensing good advice.

However, it is not as if anyone has yet come up with the perfect gift for dads (certainly no one size fits all solution like the ever popular anything-you-make-your-mother-will-be-perfect). And so we are all stuck trying to cash in our month and hoping we get a little more for it than we get for our day ... not that what we receive from either could possibly match what non-material benefits we hope to get back from our kids.

Contesting the Praise

Boys and girls, start your engines ....

The contests have begun as part of various Father's Day (Sunday, June 21) promotions. Do you need something in return or would you type a few words and send a pic for nothing but your dad's online immortality (and maybe notice by a Mizzou audience)? There's also a Savannah (Ga.) lookalike contest gains the winners nothing but a newspaper portrait.

Is your dad worth a picture and 50 words in possible exchange for a $50 gift certificate to a Texas art store? Would you like to cop 4 tickets to a Phillies game for eight lines of pop poetry? If you need a big prize to encourage the effort to celebrate your father's virtues then you should be looking at videoing the greatest "GeekDad" or baking 200 words to celebrate the Great American chocolate chip cookied dad?

There are more. Lots more. However, the point is to start celebrating dad ... or at least behave and give him some peace. Please ....

Daddy's Doo Wop Home

This week's objet d'eBay is a vinyl '45 of a beautiful lullaby sure to embarrass a child when doo wopped by dad. The A side song is "Daddy's Home," a promise by a father to the child who won't miss him anymore sung by Shep and the Limelites.

Fronted by James Sheppard — who shared writing credits with William Miller on DH — the band is just another of the One Hit Wonders of rock and roll, although Sheppard is given credit for some R&R pioneering of the song cycle.

Tangential to both the Od'e and today's holiday, another one hit wonder is Frank Hering. Although not, apparently, a father, he was a son and qualifies as a one hit wonder himself as the inventor of mother's day.

Many take the opportunity of Easter to look skyward, toward a heavenly father. However, few have the same sort of ability to pinpoint whether they should look for advice than nine children of three fathers.

This week's objet d'eBay is the blueprint of The International Space Station, current home to the 19th expedition and fathers. Gennady Padalka is a Russian cosmonaut, current commander and dad to three girls; NASA flight engineers Michael Barratt has two girls and three boys; and Koichi Wakata is the Japanese chichi of a 10-year-old boy. And if their kids want to know whether they are during the occasional IP call from space all they have to do is alternate taking a look at the blueprint and using their imagination as they stare beyond the ozone.

Abe's Tale: Father and Son

For the final coda to this year's U.S. presidents' day we have the sad story of Abe and the Thomases Lincoln.

POTUS 16 struggled with his father, Thomas, a single frontier parent for many years, upset over discipline and the elder's lack of education. (This sounds vaguely like Thing 2 telling me I don't know anything about her seventh grade math assignments, which, perhaps, maybe means I might be a presidential father?) Their divisions grew so great that as Thomas called for his son to his deathbed, the man 10 years from his presidency declined to make the 80-mile trip — not even making it after his father's passing mdash; believing, "If we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant."

Still, there was some connection made by father to son as the president named his youngest son Thomas (with his father above). In a parenting style that doesn't need a forensic psychiatrist to explain, "Tad" (nicknamed for looking like a tadpole as a newborn) was allowed to grow in a cocoon of almost no discpline. He ran wild in the White House and died at age 18, about seven years after his father's assassination.

What were we celebrating again?

Serve

Be of service. It's what fathers do.

By vote of the U.S. congress and very gradual acceptance by the states, today is the day that Martin Luther King is honored with a federal holiday. The honor to King — father of two boys and two girls — has always been with respect to what he did for others. This year, the day in his honor has become one promoting service.

So think of service, as did Iraq casualty First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who although he was not a writer, scribbled more than 200 pages for his newborn son before he was killed. His wife expanded those love letters into "A Journal for Jordan," As a model for service he gave everything for his country and all that he could for his son.

Today, everyday, be a father who does that or even more.

Santa's Baby?

It's a question that comes up once a year or so, but why doesn't Santa have children?

The roots of Mr. Claus are found in the biography of Catholic Saint Nicholas (no definitive word whether the progenitor spawned or chose otherwise). A Mrs. Claus can be traced back at least 100 years — at least as far back as Goody Santa Claus, the poesy of Katherine Lee Bates, also author of American the Beautiful.

He'd probably be a good dad. He seems to care for children. He works at home. From all sources it appears he has found a pretty good work-life balance — working only one night a year. If it's a medical thing Kris and the Mrs. could always adopt. One gets the sense they'd both like that.

Would St. Nick be more likely to have or adopt if he were not eternal and wanted a namesake to carry on the family business?

What is the answer to the mystery of Santa and a bunch of other good men walking the earth who would likely make good dads, but haven't done so yet?

No, Not That Way

From the land of oxymoron comes the dilemma of a father (or fathers) being part of something wonderful but within a tragic context.

News at the foreign desk includes the nationwide candle-lighting honoring Thai fathers as well as the king, who has let his own moral control of the country lapse as political parties battle for the favor of the country's military.

On the domestic front is the story of a son who discovered the love his father had for his grandfather. Sadly, he faced those feelings when he found his father's suicide note, which directed him to his granddad's frozen body stowed in the fridge.

Finally, we have the report from the business side of life of two sisters who may be following their father's footsteps and achieve their own real estate empire, albeit perhaps for only a short time as they sell it off. They await word on the final resolution of their 25-year legal struggle with their older brother, who claimed all rights to their father's estate — and real estate — upon his death in the 1950s.

Honor, love and footsteps. Wonderful themes of fatherhood that prove themselves not immune to being found in unfortunate circumstances.

Mislearned Lessons

When life thrusts something in your direction use it to instruct your children. Teaching moments, after all, are what we are all about. Just don't count on your lesson taking.

To be fair (unfortunately), it must be said that the instruction taken isn't always what was intended. For example, when one dad decided he could run the family Christmas as well as mom, the lesson the kids seem to take away was that he was a boob, rather than the one he intended, which was [well it was on his list, but it seems he didn't get a chance to send it, because he was doing all the stuff his wife insisted was important].

And when a father instructed his daughter in the social grace of introducing herself — so that she could report back to him the name of everyone he was supposed to remember — what she took away was that she had to have kids herself so that they could learn people's names at parties so she could avoid embarrassment as an adult.

Also, what is there to say about the lessons from golf that Greg Norman taught son Gregory other than it's a good way to pick up the hot wife (in this case tennis legend Chris Evert) off an old, now-ex-friend (in that case skiing star Andy Mill).

Kids dont' learn what they're supposed to. At least when dads are instructing. Even the brilliant lesson plan outlined by new facebook star Sam Burt — who made his kid walk miles to and from school after junior was tossed from the bus for bonking the driver with an apple core — didn't take. Apparently, Jack Burt was in trouble within three stops of being returned to bus privileges. He gets more press that way. Not what dad intended him to learn.

Never what dads intend the kids to learn ....

Rehearsing Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving only a couple days away it is time for a dad to prepare, to remember last year.

First, he must catch the turkey



Then, he must cook the turkey



Finally, he must have the talk