Christmas Test

Check out the latest podcast!

Xmas Podcast: Does Santa Still Rule?

Who drives the sleigh in your family at Christmas time?
Do you rely on Santa Claus's spirit of generosity as the carrot and schtick to keep the kids behaved at this stressful and over-commercialized time of year, or do you keep it real with the young'uns when it comes to gifts and who provides them?
Click onto the "Be My Guest" podcast for a stimulating conversation among parents who fly on the fine line of fantasy and fact when it comes to rationalizing what's under the tree....
(Remember to click on the "direct download" button and feel free to add a comment.)

Father-Son Bonding At The Braves Game

Don’t feel insulted if you’re a doting dad who’s just been told by his five-year-old son to pipe down so you won’t distract him from the game going on at Turner Field.

Just take solace in knowing you’ve done your part to introduce him to the national pastime.

When he’s more attentive to the towering LED scoreboards, the other fans in the stands, the barking beer vendors, and even the bat boy, than you, that just means he’s fully engaged. Lasting memories are being engrained.
Just sit back and enjoy.
And “enjoy” you will, Daddy.
On a balmy night in downtown Atlanta, few spectacles match the sensory overload a Braves home game delivers, win or lose.

The 12-year-old ballpark couldn’t be more kid-friendly, it’s not too tough on a workaday Joe’s wallet if he plays his cards right and _ unless the Braves get on a winning streak _ driving in and out is a relative breeze.
Mommy dropped the two of us off on Georgia Avenue, a block away, then sped off northward like she was Thelma on her way to scoop up Louise.

That’s where the bonding experience began for the little Boss Man and me.
We’d scarcely made it through the security gates before bumping into one of his classmates from Pre-K (Cards-rooting Dad in tow). No pre-game brewskies for daddy(s): before you could say “Cracker Jacks”, we were escorted into “Tooner Field”. It’s a (free) mini game complex with an edifice plastered with Cartoon Network logos. It’s got a moth-to-a-flame effect on kids.

I marvel at the scaled-down ballpark with the painted rubber field. Jovial attendants help kids take turns hitting, catching and running bases. Energy burned.

Though their seats are on the lower first base line, while ours are low and right behind third, Brian Patrick’s Daddy offers to give us a ride home in case Mommy flakes out on us. (Say…you don’t suppose Brian Patrick’s Mommy is Louise, do ya?)

After that, we start a breezy walk toward our seats; stopping only briefly at the open-air Chophouse Lounge to see if the bartender who deejayed me and Mommy’s wedding was working. He wasn’t. That first ($6) beer would still had to wait.

Try not to be in a rush: your kid’s likely to be enticed by the Scouts Alley row of pitching and batting cages, the Clubhouse Store’s array of souvenirs, bands playing live on the Plaza Stage, or all the memorabilia housed in the Braves Museum (Aisle 134, deep left field).
Once we finally sat down and the Bud Light-peddlers’ siren song flooded my ears, the Boss Man’s eagle eyes spotted Jake (from his YMCA hoops squad) seated a couple rows down and within spitting distance of Chipper Jones in the hot corner.

Jake’s family was there celebrating his fifth birthday. (For a mere $55 you can have birthday wishes blasted up on the scoreboard!) Luckily, Braves fans are accustomed to dealing with kids’ sudden urges to scoot around. They act as intent on helping lil’ sluggers enjoy themselves as you are.

It’s the bottom of the first inning before we’re settled in to watch the game for real. I wind up shelling out around $25-$30 for a beer, a dog, a big bag of popcorn, a frozen lemonade and some chips. But who’s counting?
Not him, anyway.

“What’s the score?”, was the question I got on an inning-by-inning basis. (We called Mommy at the top of the ninth of Atlanta’s 3-2 loss to St. Louis just to make sure she’d be retrieving us.)

Occasionaly, he’d ask, “What’s his name?” when a player's mug beamed out on the big screen.
Otherwise: virtual silence.
To say he was absorbed would be putting it mildly.



The firmest sign that we’d made a connection came subtly, just after one sizzling line drive spanked the short left field wall, and then another high spinning foul bounced off the chest of a beer-spilling chap a few rows behind us.
The Boss Man reached between my knees to snag the glove I’d encouraged him to bring along, “just in case”, and slipped it onto his tiny left hand.

His “Uh oh” gaze told me he sensed possibility. When he turned back toward the field I knew: he was into the game.

Look Both Ways

The AskYourDaddy blog is proud to introduce a trial partnership intended to spark dialogue about positive father-son experiences.
The EventChaser blog network now agrees to work in cahoots with AYD to prepare dads, big brothers, mentors and uncles to make the most of their outings with impressionable boys.
Check back regularly for updates on the ins and outs of sporting events, like Braves games and recreational activities all around Atlanta.
Visit EventChaser yourself if you'd like to blog about your own urban adventures.

UPDATE: BLACK TEEN MURDER RATES

Since the esteemed Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page was kind enough to "Friend" me today on Facebook, I felt duty-bound to check for recent writings of his that my pertain to the AskYourDaddy.blogspot.com conversation.



FLICKR/candylikeabar/ELTON SAULSBERRY


Given all of the Obama-driven news he's had to cover of late, I was surprised to find that Page, like me, was concerned about newly dispatched statistics regarding murder rates among young black males. (His observations on the crisis were posted a full week behind mine but, like I said, the man's been busy...)

And the song remains the same.

We can use more federal support for police on the street and other traditional law enforcement funding that was trimmed during the Bush administration, the Fox report suggests. We could also fight harder for tougher prosecution of crimes committed with a gun.

For the full article, CLICK HERE...

To offer your own thoughts, scroll down or comment below...

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING

The Negro National Anthem

"Lift Every Voice and Sing"

by James Weldon Johnson

Originally written by Johnson for a presentation in celebration of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. This was originally performed in Jacksonville, Florida, by children. The popular title for this work is:


'THE NEGRO NATIONAL ANTHEM'

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land James Weldon Johnson June 17, 1871 - June 26, 1938

Timeline
1871 Born in Jacksonville, Florida, June 17
1894 Graduated from Atlanta University
1897 First black admitted to Florida bar
1899 Wrote "Lift Every Voice and Sing" with his brother
1906 US consul, Puerto Cabello, Venezuela
1909 US consul, Corinto, Nicaragua
1920 Appointed executive secretary of NAACP
1921 Wrote first novel: "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man"
1922 Collected poems of black poets in "The Book of American Negro Poetry."
1927 With brother Rosamond, published "God's Trombones"
1930 Became professor at Fisk University
1933 Wrote autobiography, "Along This Way"
1938 Died in automobile accident in Maine

source: africanamerican.com

Black Teen Murder Rates Rising

Who's to blame when murders committed by black youth have soared by as much as 34 percent since the millennium?


VIDEO: YOUTUBE

That staggering statistic comes courtesy of a Northeastern University report released today and reported on widely. Unfortunately, most folks that this report concerns the most were probably pre-occupied with the absurd insult of that "Barack the Magic Negro" blip that Chip Saltsman released earlier this year, to the delight of our President-elect's detractors.
Note to the RNC's Mr. Ken Blackwell: Quit clownin'! You too, Larry Elder; if your words held any weight you would't have to bug your eyes, wave your arms and squawk.
Forget that distraction. What matters is that 1,142 black boys aged 14 to 17 committed murder last year. I'm no math whiz, but doesn't that equate to more than 200 kids killing kids (in most cases) per state in 2007?
Who's going to step up and help stop this madness?
One expert, conservative Carnegie Mellon criminologist Dr. Alfred Blumstein, told the times that the breakdown of the black family is chiefly to blame.
"In the inner city, you have large numbers of kids with no future, hanging out together with a great emphasis on their street credibility."

As gun laws loosen, the economy falters, peer pressures tighten and households dissolve, what hope is there in beating back that phantom "Mr. Big" who keeps crime scenes appearing?