of history, Manchester was also the son of a soldier he idolized and father of children who were pledged to him. His son, musician John Manchester, has just published a short essay, "Building My Father's Coffin," which will be featured in a promised, upcoming memoir of life with a great man who wrote about great men.
It's the holiday season and time to cry. So let us induce those tears with two stories of dancing.
First, all Chattanooga (Tenn.) Nola Beth wanted from Santa was one dance with her Iraq-stationed dad. Father and daughter got their ballroom dance, a memory for both when he returns to danger and she returns to life without him.
Second, there are the fathers filling out the corps as dancers with the Longview (Texas) Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker — not really a dad-friendly title, but a classic, nonetheless. They say they do it for their kids, but it's pretty clear the fathers are getting as much or more out of it for themselves.
It is, of course, ridiculous to use a baby as a billboard. Still, rather than let the kid do the talking for the father, too many put words into (pull words out of?) his or her mouth. And so it is with today's objet d'Ebay, a cutie-pie onesie positing the conceit that a newborn has any idea at all about father coolness.
More intriguing — tatoo and billboard related — is the tale yet to be completed of a Bloomington, Ill., man who is allegedly offering his arm for advertising in the interest of raising money to go to nursing school and take care of his daughter. An eBay search turned up no such auction.
Another story of dads and tatoos yet to be completed is the "search for the unkown soldier" being conducted by a Duluth (Minn.) lass. She picked up the "I Love You" note from the soldier's daughter that he was having transcribed onto his body before he left for Iraq and — being inspired enough to honor her own father through tatoo — she carried the note around for a year and would like to return the note to the dedicated/decorated dad, if she can find him.
Introducing himself to the readers of MomLogic, Token Dad brings the predictable shtick (e.g., "Moms buy tomatoes ... Dads buy ketchup"), even if is in the unpredictable guise of a SAHD.
He knows his audience. Dads are blunderers challenges no reader in the same was as, say, how a dad did best by crushing his son's hoop star dreams with a single game of one on one. And a cheap laugh is much more fun than how a dad can lose his own anchor and become the neighborhoods, as in "Quiet Chaos," the new movie about a widower with a 10-year-old who just hangs out on a bench. And it is certainly true that the oaf dad in the picture is much more comforting to most than even the most thoughtful tales of European boomers searching for the American GI dad they never knew.
Maybe someday TD will challenge as well as entertain, will transform before his audience from "Stepin Fetchit" to "Go and Get it YourSelf ... and I mean now!" However that will require a change in his audience (hopefully) more than in himself. Still, here's hoping.
While it is true that you add nothing to "golf" to make it "goof," it is also true that occasionally an important life lesson can be discovered among the links. From the case of Paul Goydos, comes the lesson that geographical proximity is not the determiner of how close the bond is between father and children.
Goydos, a single father since 2003, has two teens and also a career as a professional golfer. Although he did take a year off the tour to homemake for his girls after the divorce, work takes him away for many hours, days, weeks. However, he is also close enough for them to see him in all parts of their life. As his younger daughter says of his growing influence, "I definitely talk to my dad about a bunch of stuff,” she said. “I used to not think I could tell him anything. This past year, I was thinking to myself, I shouldn’t be afraid of talking to him at all." And in return he takes them to work with him (at least in his head) every single day.
Taking your kids to work in the head turns out to be much more valuable than simply dragging them with you ... at least as shown by John Douglas Cartlidge Sr., a Pennsylvania gent who picked up a trade and tried teaching it to his son. Unfortunately, the trade he picked up was robbery — he was at a vocational institute, prison — and he and his son are now on the hook for burglary, criminal conspiracy, theft, criminal trespass and receiving stolen property. The son rolled on the old man pretty quickly after the cops came calling.
Keeping your kids in your head even seems to lay a foundation for bonding when thousands of miles and no communication separates a father and children. Such is the lesson from the reuniting of Cleveland's Michael Culp and his two Brit sons. He was an American soldier and was married to their mom before circumstances separated him from his boys for a score of years. He kept thinking of and searching for them. They were thinking of and searching for him. Andso, as in the case of Goydos — and in direct contrast to the experience of Carlidge — it's all about the thinking about and caring for the children, not just about making them an accomplice in your life.
Oprah brings dad-o-nine Larry Shine [Earlier: The Home Body] to the forefront with today's show. He'll be featured in Unconventional, Unforgettable Dads along with a writing pop getting help from 1000s of women he only knows online and a dad in stars, stripes and fatigues.
For those who prefer their U,U dads documentaried rather than TVed, "In a Dream" has just opened. Jeremiah Zagar set out to capture a little bit of the background to his father's work. Instead, he filmed Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar offering himself in the words and images that captured the high- and lowlights of a fractured life and gave himself a picture of his dad he never imagined before.
The two "celebrations" will be very different. While neither will answer for everyman whether to turn their video lens on a father or let his children turn theirs on him, they are both clear in their warning: when you look closely at dads, they're never what they first appear.
