How to Gesture

Father's Day Wishes

First, a belated "Happy Father's Day" to the fathers out there. I had plenty to do on my day, including spend some time at my mom's with my stepdad, a wonderful guy, and my brothers and their families. My dad lives eight hours away, so he got a phone call and our best wishes.

Freaky event of the day: It was 7:00AM, just hopping in my car to head to Men's Bible Study before church. The song playing at that given time was Harry Chapin belting out Cat's In The Cradle.

Mitch Berg's Shot In The Dark is a great blog (Sean didn't stipulate that we couldn't use the word "blog" this week), one that I read daily. Mitch also is one of the hosts of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, a weekly radio show on am1280, The Patriot here in Minnesota. The Northern Alliance is a confederation of Minnesota's brightest and best bloggers, as determined by the brightest and best talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Yesterday, Mitch opined on whiny feminist Father's Day greetings. We can't just let Dad's have a great day, eh?

The Star Tribune (registration required) also got into the game. The Strib can't let a day go by without some sort of guilt trip laid on us who abide by the law, create wealth, go to church, love our spouse of the opposite sex, etc. Yesterday's guilt trip was aimed as us fathers, specifically those of us not in jail yesterday.

The story goes on to describe a men's group which meets behind the bars in which some dad's can learn about anger management, patience, or tolerance.

I believe that there are a lot of dads behind bars where the guy was likely more a sperm donor than a parent or father. Parenting, or being a father, implies nurturing, not laying down the smack on your girlfriend.

I'm sincerely glad these guys are trying to help themselves, so that this sort of thing doesn't get repeated later, by themselves, or even worse, start a vicious cycle with their offspring. That whole "Cat's In The Cradle" thing.