Is the following story typically male or what?
CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.
Steward, who did not know where he was, eventually approached a policeman at a petrol station and asked for help late Wednesday.
"This little old man came up to me saying he was lost. He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife," said Victorian Police Senior Constable Clayton Smith.
Steward, who was reunited with his family on Wednesday, said he took the wrong turn and just kept on going.
"I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive," he told reporters, adding he did not need a satellite navigation device as he'd only been lost once.
Doesn't everybody take 9 hours to get the paper?
No need for a GPS when all you want is a nice quiet drive!
Showing posts with label blokes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blokes. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Celia Lashlie @ South Sydney High
On Tuesday evening I went to hear Celia Lashlie, author of 'He'll Be Ok: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men' speak. I had read the book and wanted to hear her in person as I wondered how she would speak the truths regarding mums she rights about publicly. Would she revert to a politically correct position or would she really say out loud what she says in her book?
What a speaker and what honesty. I wonder if I spoke the same way to a room full predominantly of mothers would I have been listened to or lynched? I fear the second. She spoke about the role mothers play in the lives of their boys, the need to understand the communication differences between men an women and particularly teen boys, teen boys pragmatism (only doing what affects them personally), the physiological changes and their impacts and the modeling of relationships between fathers and mothers.
She talked about the need for mothers to step back out of the lives of their boys and fathers to step up, the importance of being a parent and not a friend and that much later in life they will be your friend but now you are a parent, about not doing for them what they can do for themselves and so much more.
She also highlighted the traits we men bring to the relationship with our wives which are similarly to the behaviour of our boys and how that infuriates our wives but also the way women communicate infuriates us the way it does our children.
There was a lot of laughter but laughter sourced in the identification with the story, with the way we are and the way we experience life within our family. If you haven't read the book read it or purchase the cd of her talk off her website http://www.celialashlie.co.nz/live.html. I will have copies of the CD available next month.
And if you ever hear she is speaking in Sydney or wherever you are, do yourself a favour go and see her. You won't regret it.
What a speaker and what honesty. I wonder if I spoke the same way to a room full predominantly of mothers would I have been listened to or lynched? I fear the second. She spoke about the role mothers play in the lives of their boys, the need to understand the communication differences between men an women and particularly teen boys, teen boys pragmatism (only doing what affects them personally), the physiological changes and their impacts and the modeling of relationships between fathers and mothers.
She talked about the need for mothers to step back out of the lives of their boys and fathers to step up, the importance of being a parent and not a friend and that much later in life they will be your friend but now you are a parent, about not doing for them what they can do for themselves and so much more.
She also highlighted the traits we men bring to the relationship with our wives which are similarly to the behaviour of our boys and how that infuriates our wives but also the way women communicate infuriates us the way it does our children.
There was a lot of laughter but laughter sourced in the identification with the story, with the way we are and the way we experience life within our family. If you haven't read the book read it or purchase the cd of her talk off her website http://www.celialashlie.co.nz/live.html. I will have copies of the CD available next month.
And if you ever hear she is speaking in Sydney or wherever you are, do yourself a favour go and see her. You won't regret it.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Violence - The Biff Goes On.
In the Melbourne age today Dr Jerry Rosenfield, frustrated by the consequences of violence he sees in his patients 'comments' on street violence ''Is it a problem with education? A lack of respect … Are they divorced from spiritual connections, are they not getting adequate education about how to behave in school and from their parents?'' (''Young men's mindlessness starts at home: surgeon'', The Age, 31/8).
http://www.theage.com.au/national/young-mens-mindlessness-starts-at-home-surgeon-20090830-f3ye.html.
If we add it to the responses from those involved in the Mullimbinby incident we begin to get a picture of a generation who externalises and not internalises the reasons for bad things happening. A young man involved in the Mullimbimby incident says words to the effect, it's no-ones fault it just happened. And the parents blame the school for not dealing with it.
Houston we have a problem and we need more than ground control to fix it.These are the things I talk about at Bloke's breakfast and in the parenting seminars I run at St Jude's Randwick. I have being doing this stuff for some 20+ years and the problem hasn't changed, what has changed is how we parent (noticed on Sunshine Channel 7 this morning a section on how to negotiate your 2 year old to eat vegetables for example), parents want to be friends to their children (they need to be liked by their children), parents encourage the externalisation, discipline is an old fashioned word and parents, in seeking their kids to be friends, help them to grow up way before their heads are ready for it and much more.
Jerry Rosenfield is on the money and asks the questions we are afraid to answer, and while I agree with Dr Carr-Greg that how we deal with alcohol needs review we are only masking the problem if we stay at that level (the same with law enforcement and court responses). It is to be noted that the other recent violent situation in a NSW school did not involve alcohol.
Michael goes on to say that the ‘risk factors for violence also reside within the individual, their peers and the community’. I agree. Individual sin (old fashioned word for thinking I am the centre of the world) is grown in the fertile ground of community that focuses on individualisation, blame and instant gratification.
It is not what goes in that is the problem, although it may make the problem worse, but what resides with in us and is expressed that is the problem. Its seems to me after some 30 years of working with young men in particular, that the issue has to do with anger, frustration and lack of mentoring in how to handle a range of issues impacting on men, and young men in particular in ways that work for men. It has to do with how we parent, how we fail to allow young men to take risk in positive ways, how we offer or do not offer them opportunities to be valued and valuable in society, how we as parents try and make life safe and protect them from the consequences of their actions and much more.
A debate is needed as to what constitutes common sense parenting, what are the roles of experts and statistics, what is my responsibility in life,what is the role of parents – friends or those with the responsibility to train their children how to live in society with respect for themselves and for others. It is a debate we need but won’t get as those of us old enough to take part are part of the problem – we drive too fast, drink too much, give the finger to the car which cuts us off and more – all in the presence of our children, and then wonder why we get what we get.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/young-mens-mindlessness-starts-at-home-surgeon-20090830-f3ye.html.
If we add it to the responses from those involved in the Mullimbinby incident we begin to get a picture of a generation who externalises and not internalises the reasons for bad things happening. A young man involved in the Mullimbimby incident says words to the effect, it's no-ones fault it just happened. And the parents blame the school for not dealing with it.
Houston we have a problem and we need more than ground control to fix it.These are the things I talk about at Bloke's breakfast and in the parenting seminars I run at St Jude's Randwick. I have being doing this stuff for some 20+ years and the problem hasn't changed, what has changed is how we parent (noticed on Sunshine Channel 7 this morning a section on how to negotiate your 2 year old to eat vegetables for example), parents want to be friends to their children (they need to be liked by their children), parents encourage the externalisation, discipline is an old fashioned word and parents, in seeking their kids to be friends, help them to grow up way before their heads are ready for it and much more.
Jerry Rosenfield is on the money and asks the questions we are afraid to answer, and while I agree with Dr Carr-Greg that how we deal with alcohol needs review we are only masking the problem if we stay at that level (the same with law enforcement and court responses). It is to be noted that the other recent violent situation in a NSW school did not involve alcohol.
Michael goes on to say that the ‘risk factors for violence also reside within the individual, their peers and the community’. I agree. Individual sin (old fashioned word for thinking I am the centre of the world) is grown in the fertile ground of community that focuses on individualisation, blame and instant gratification.
It is not what goes in that is the problem, although it may make the problem worse, but what resides with in us and is expressed that is the problem. Its seems to me after some 30 years of working with young men in particular, that the issue has to do with anger, frustration and lack of mentoring in how to handle a range of issues impacting on men, and young men in particular in ways that work for men. It has to do with how we parent, how we fail to allow young men to take risk in positive ways, how we offer or do not offer them opportunities to be valued and valuable in society, how we as parents try and make life safe and protect them from the consequences of their actions and much more.
A debate is needed as to what constitutes common sense parenting, what are the roles of experts and statistics, what is my responsibility in life,what is the role of parents – friends or those with the responsibility to train their children how to live in society with respect for themselves and for others. It is a debate we need but won’t get as those of us old enough to take part are part of the problem – we drive too fast, drink too much, give the finger to the car which cuts us off and more – all in the presence of our children, and then wonder why we get what we get.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Last Day In Rochester
Only 6 weeks ago I received an email from Paul Pearson inviting me to the 11th International Thomas Merton Conference in Rochester USA. While it wasn't a personal invitation it seemed to me to be so, so I discussed it with my family and made the long trek to the USA.
I wasn't sure what I was coming to except I knew we would be discussing Merton and his life and work. I knew there would be scholars and academics, experts and guru's and indeed did find such. But that wasn't all I found here. I found the spirit of Merton whose love for dialogue and openness seems to imbue this group of people.
No-one here kids themselves that Fr Louis (Thomas Merton) was a perfect saint. All are well aware that, like us, he is a frail and vulnerable human being which seems to be what attracts us to him. There are no glossy images or eloquent sweetness and light spoken about him. He is just a bloke but a bloke who could see into and engage with the divine in others, whose ordinariness drew people to him and out of themselves but didn't mask that very humanness in himself. I have had a chance to chat to some people who knew him and he was above all else simply human. Fr Jim Conner who was Merton's Under Master of Novices spoke very candidly and openly about who Merton was, about some of the confict and some of his misdemeanours as did Herbet Mason yet, their underlying admiration and respect for him remains. As does mine.
At the same time the integrity of his thought and writing is such that we are always discovering ourselves in the nuances of what he has to say. It seems that as we see him more clearly as a human being we hear him more clearly in what he says and we see and hear our selves more honestly. In his words we lose a little more of our false self and discover a little more of our true self.
A clear focus for many seems to be Merton's turn to the East and especially his interaction with and practice of Zen Buddhism. In our modern climate where alternative practices are in vogue Merton's engagement with Buddhism as practice to enlighten his Christian Monasticsm seems to have preempted our age.
Another focus of the conference was the engagement with other religions, particularly Islam and the Jews. We shared in panels which spoke of these issues and religious services such as the Shabbat (service to usher in the Sabbath) which was moving. It seems again that Merton has shown us the way to dialogue with others, particularly those of the Abrahamic traditions which we desperately need to hear and practice in our fragmented age.
The conference concluded with a Mass presided over by Monsignor Bill Shannon (92) who was the founding president of the ITMS (formed on the 10th anniversary of Merton's death in 1978). Bill shared a homily which reinforced the need for us to rediscover Merton's ideas and particularly the need to engage in dialogue with other faiths including secular atheism and finished by saying simply, "It is getting late."
The mass was moving and very beautiful with wonderful singing and music. Sitting in the chapel of the Sisters of St Joseph surrounded by the stain glass windows depicting women saints was poignant for a church, and unfortunately not just the Roman church, which denies women a formal role.
Later in the day a group of us went to Genessee Abbey for afternoon prayers, another experience altogether which took us back to the middle-ages and a practice of monasticsm we have only read about.
Tomorrow I fly home, a very different person somewhere deep within than the one who came here on the 8th June.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Blokes Breakfast 21st March 2009
Well the next Blokes Breakfast is on this Saturday 21st @ 8.30a.m. and I hear from our Chef Warren that it is going to be as great as usual.
We will have our missionary Kees Bootsma with us as a guest, so come along and meet him.
Our theme for the next series of breakfast are based on a book by Joan Chiitister called 'Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope'. It's an excellent little read and is available at most Christian bookstores if you would like to read it. I know Pauline Books & Media, 150 Castlereagh Street, Sydney NSW 2000 has copies available.
We will also look at some of the timely discussions in the media such as gambling on Good Friday, shops opening on Easter Sunday and anything else which may be interesting.
Hope to see you all there.
We will have our missionary Kees Bootsma with us as a guest, so come along and meet him.
Our theme for the next series of breakfast are based on a book by Joan Chiitister called 'Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope'. It's an excellent little read and is available at most Christian bookstores if you would like to read it. I know Pauline Books & Media, 150 Castlereagh Street, Sydney NSW 2000 has copies available.
We will also look at some of the timely discussions in the media such as gambling on Good Friday, shops opening on Easter Sunday and anything else which may be interesting.
Hope to see you all there.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
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