DadsCenter.org Blog

Camelot

Tonight’s family activity, Camelot.  The kids are curious, though they’ve been listening to the Julie Andrews/Richard Burton version in the car, and Richard Harris on the newly released 1982 HBO version on dvd.  I hope it’s entertaining for them, and that me and the wife have a good evening, too.  From all acounts, I’ve heard that Michael York is not a good Arthur.  He’s even leaving the play in the coming months to be released by Lou Diamond Phillips…  I kid you not.  Will let you know if the reviews were accurate.

Another good site for dads

Dads and Daughters……..

TB, Bird flu pandemic, and a lawyer from Atlanta

What do these three topics have in mind?  Well, the lawyer from Atlanta who circumvented health experts and national governments to sneak himself back into the country whilst allegedly infected with a drug-resistant form of TB shows that for all the preparation and prevention for a bird flu pandemic, and even that crazy movie ABC did last fall to scare the world about the potential of a pandemic from bird-flu, may not be as far-flung as some of the naysayers thought.

How many thousands of Americans travel to Asia and the Mid-East every day and return?  What if one of them actually thought he had been exposed to bird-flu once he’d been in another country and thought it was in HIS best interest to get back to America where the treatment would be better, all the while exposing innocent countless people to the disease?   This recent effort to stop this guy from returning home and instead going into immediate quarantine obviously didn’t work.

Maybe if the Congress actually wanted to hold some meaningful hearings, they’d bring this guy’s lawyer, his wife, and those who were trying to keep him out of the country before it and ask how something like this happened and what’s going to be done to avoid potential health breaches like this from happening again in the future?  Now that would actually be productive and protect the interest of all Americans and our neighbors abroad.

Summer Activities

Any suggestions out there about summer activities?  We’ve made a trip to the local library to sign up for the summer reading program and three weeks from now, we’ll be headed to California to go to Yosemite for five days.  The rain has stopped pool construction in its tracks.  Nothing has been done for almost two weeks now and they’re scheduled to work on the decking tomorrow, but alas, there is a huge line of thunderstorms headed our way that are going to wash that plan right off the chart.  We’re taking in a garden show this weekend and we’ve seen all three block buster films.  This message isn’t to say we’re without ideas.  We’re just curious to hear new ones….

Article on Dad blogs

Al.com recently had an interesting article posted on those of us in cyberspace who blog about being dads.  I think the general conclusion was that we could do more in the way of advice, and be a little more careful about the details revealed about our families.   Here, you read and decide:

Other Dad Blogs

Here are some decent dad blogs that I’ve been finding.  Searching for more.  If yours isn’t here, please let me know.

http://www.dad-eblog.com/

dad-eblog.com

Musings from a dedicated dad

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/family/

http://dinnerwithdad.blogspot.com/

http://kevinpierpont.com/

http://www.dadbloggers.com/

http://www.thenewdadblog.com/

Madness, simply madness….

Mother, 3 daughters found dead
8-month-old in good condition after being found hanging in closet

What kind of a world do we live in where madness like this is so prevalent.  An 8-month-old was in good condition Tuesday after being found hanging with the bodies of her mother and three sisters in a closet inside their Hudson Oaks mobile home.  This was an apparent murder-suicide.

Discipline and Being A Parent

I think the hardest thing I run into as a parent is seeing my kids, whether biological or step, do things that they know is wrong, and ultimately I feel like I as a parent should have some how taught them better not to do.  Such happened late this afternoon, when one of my daughters and one of my sons did something they should not have over at the school across the street.  Not a major offense mind you, but something they should have known, and did know, not to do.  They both got punished equally and scolded severely, and yet I’m feeling like somehow I didn’t do my job as a dad.  I know that’s not right and that as they come to ages of accountability, they will make more and more bad decisions, some far worse than today.  I guess maybe it’s just that one of my younger daughters was part of the activity.  Maybe that’s what’s troubling me the most.  And then, when to decide that they’ve stayed in their rooms long enough….

Faith and Peace

Tomorrow, the wife and I are returning to our former single-parent family class at church where I’m beginning to teach a new series on faith and peace.  Tomorrow we’re centering on just the definitions of the two words and questions that come from the obvious–Can one have faith and not peace.  Can one have peace, but not have faith?  And the definitions of each word are something abiguous as well.  I’ve been able to come up with dozens of uses for the word peace.  Peace prize, peace pipe, peace process, peace on earth (Dr. Strangelove!!), world peace, at peace with himself, etc.  Each of those phrases has such a different focus on the meaning of the word and yet it is the same word.  Faith, I don’t think has as many variations of use, but it does have degrees and different uses.

I think in a house of seven children, peace seems like it would be the harder of the two words to find, if you were thinking only of the meaning of tranquility.  Nonetheless, tomorrow we begin our discussion of the two words.

From the AP: Today’s men in their 30s not making as much as dad did….

American men in their 30s earn less than their fathers’ generation did at the same age, potentially reversing longtime assumptions that each successive generation will be better off than its predecessor, according to a study released Friday.

Family incomes of thirtysomething men have continued to rise in recent decades, but mostly because more of their wives are working, the study’s authors said. Yet even with the addition of women’s paychecks, the rate of family income growth has slowed.

Taken together with data showing more workers are earning less in comparison with the incomes of top earners, the report suggests that a growing number of Americans “believe that the rules of the game are no longer fair,” said John Morton, director of the Economic Mobility Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts and one of the study’s lead authors.

In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s was $35,010 – 12 percent less than thirtysomething men in 1974, adjusted for inflation, according to the study, which was based on Census Bureau data. In contrast, men in their 30s in 1994 earned 5 percent more than their fathers did at the same age.

Researchers focused on that age group because income in the 30s is a good predictor of lifetime income, according to the report.

Outsourcing and the demise of higher-paying manufacturing jobs have contributed to the stagnation in men’s incomes, Mr. Morton said. The influx of well-educated women into the workforce since the 1970s also might have weighed on men’s wages, he said.

The generational income gap highlights troubling questions, Mr. Morton said, including what happens if an increasing percentage of workers believe the American dream “is off-limits to them.”

The Pew study does not make policy recommendations. But economist Heather Boushey of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research argues that focusing on low-wage jobs would help curb the relative slide in men’s earnings.

In particular, she supports boosting the pay of low-wage jobs above the minimum wage, along with on-the-job-training that encourages career advancement.

A stronger push to college also could help raise men’s earnings.

“Education has always been the one staircase out of the class-stratified society,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York.

Yet among those under 50 years old, 32 percent of women hold a four-year degree, compared with 23 percent of men. That’s a dramatic change from the past, when men were better educated than women.

Die-hard careerist baby boomers might partly explain the inability of men in their 30s to move up the income ladder as quickly as their fathers. From the moment Generation Xers set foot in the workplace, boomers have been the “ceiling” blocking their way up the income ladder, said Peter Rose of marketing research company Yankelovich Inc. in Los Angeles.

“The boomers stand out in defining themselves in terms of their work and have shown a disinclination to get out of the way,” he said.

The Pew report is the first in a planned series of studies on economic mobility drawing together researchers representing think tanks from across the political spectrum.