I took in a little boxing action Saturday afternoon at Central High School as I watched a young man from our church make his boxing debut. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t his first fight, though; just the first one with a referee and a bell and people watching who wished him well.

I’ve known the kid since he joined the family of some friends of ours as a foster child when he was little and was later adopted. I’ve encountered him regularly at church and through some of his schooling and from when his father would bring him to our men’s ministry functions. More recently he’s been part of the youth group my wife and I lead. I think he loves his family and wants to do right and do well, but he’s also been impulsive, oppositional and stubborn since the beginning and ready for a scrap, including times — such as a few years ago when I insisted upon a little one-on-one sit down with him — when I’m pretty sure he’d even have liked to take a couple of pokes at me. In a way, however, you almost couldn’t help but admire his will and the way he’d bow his neck and resist and endure any correction, no matter how long it lasted. You could tell there was something mighty inside that would make a tremendous foundation if it could ever be channeled in the right direction.

He’s 17 now, and several months ago he met up with former pro boxer Sankara Frazier and his Circle of Discipline gym. Frazier’s a hard-nosed guy determined to help kids use boxing to get their act together physically, emotionally and, in particular, spiritually through discipline, focus and hard work. Since then it has been as if a light has gone on in this young man’s head, a light so bright you can see it in his face. It’s as if all the instruction, correction and encouragement he’s received over the years have come together now that he can see a practical application. Since he’s been working with Frazier he’s not nearly as volatile, and his natural charm and wit have come to the fore.

Last Wednesday he was telling me about his upcoming bout and I could tell he was excited. I may be reading too much into it, but I think he was happy not just for the chance to compete but also because he realizes now that people are interested in seeing him do well. I told him I was going to come to the fight, but that he had to be sure to make the fight last long enough to make it worth my trip.

So what does he do? About a minute into the first round and after exchanging a few flurries of punches with his opponent he gets a left jab in, followed by a right hand that knocks the other guy to his knees in a corner. The referee stood the other kid up, wiped his gloves and gave him a standing eight count. When the kid didn’t raise his gloves by the end of the count the ref called the fight and our young boxer and most of his sizable cheering section left our feet. As he moved through the group afterwards we hooked hands and the first thing he did was to laugh and say, “I know, you told me to make it last longer but he just kept leaving it open so I just kept feeding him my right hand!”

“It’s alright – you did well,” I said. “Congratulations!”

It may be just one round, but I think the young man may have finally heard the bell.

bookmark to:

That’s what it says on a tee-shirt long coveted by my wife and oldest daughter. I’m guessing that it may also be favored by Claude Peck and Rick Nelson, the writers behind the Withering Glance column, the StarTribune’s paean to metrosexuality and snarky boy-talk on fashion and grooming. In a recent column they took a slap not only at men who wear too much cologne, but also at those whose selected scents are passe.

Personally, I didn’t know that men’s fragrances fell in and out of style like the widths of lapels and ties, but I guess it’s not that surprising. You really can’t promote something as being “in” this year unless there’s a corresponding something that’s “out” and I probably would have realized this if I thought as much about cologne as I do, say, about the air pressure in my tires. I guess I better not dust-off those old bottle of Grey Flannel or Devon Country if I don’t want to get sneered out of Bellanotte (or I could just avoid Bellanotte).

I blame my lack of sophistication on my upbringing. I didn’t have much exposure to splash-on manly scents beyond Old Spice, Avon’s Wild Country (in a cool-looking duck-shaped bottle) or some good old Aqua Velva. (I do remember thinking at one time back then that it would be cool to have some Hai Karate aftershave because I thought, based on the commercials, that it automatically gave you martial arts powers).

Apparently these days a guy has to be sensitive to the dictates of the fashionistas and the nuances of sandalwood undertones. Such complexity outside of my experience makes me conservative and unwilling to take chances. Outside of a good soap and a strong deodorant, the only time I stick my neck out is when I see my wife coming at me with one of those scent samplers torn from a magazine. I try to avoid having my presence be offensive, but other than that what I smell like isn’t that important to me.

I know, I’m missing the point. I’m not supposed to wear cologne because I like it, but because other people (presumably women) do. I hang out with guys a lot and I’m sure I’ve smelled cologne or aftershave occasionally, but it’s never made a memorable impression on me. There must be something about the way a woman’s olfactory receptors are wired to her receptiveness – or at least that’s the story we guys are buying. If you tell us that rolling in fish guts will have women curling up in our laps like the family cat then we’ll do it (yeah, there are guys who’d roll in fish guts anyway, but you get my point). Furthermore, shouldn’t a woman be attracted by a scent that communicates the guy is an earnest, hard-working fellow and a good provider, something like an eau-de-livelongday scent? Instead, why do so many men’s colognes have all the bad boy subtlety of a wife-beater tee-shirt and steel-toed cowboy boots?

And here’s another thing: supposedly, guys wear scents that are scientifically proven (we like that science business) to attract women. But why do women wear perfume? Most of the flowery, fruity things I smell don’t do much as far as piquing my interest. There was a time, though, in the 80s when Obsession ruled the world that I’d get nauseous when I smelled it because it actually reminded me of Shelltox, an aerosol insecticide we used when I was growing up to kill wasps in our garage. If the flowery, fruity stuff isn’t for attracting guys then does that mean women wear perfume for other women? And if that’s the case, shouldn’t guys splash on the flowery, fruity when they’re trying to attract women – even if it smells worse to us than fish guts?

Again, I’m in over my head on this subject, so I’d like to know from other guys what colognes, if any, you wear and why, along with any successes or spectacular disasters you’ve experienced as a result. Similarly, ladies, what do you like to smell on a man, and why? And just so it’s not one-sided, I’ll share this:

The scent that really gets my attention and makes my heart pound is pork cutlets and sauerkraut. Ohhh, baby!

bookmark to:

A multi-denominational conference of clergy in favor of an amendment to the Minnesota constitution banning gay marriage was interrupted this morning by a bomb threat (story here). The conference is being held at Grace Church in Eden Prarie, and is described in this article.

A bomb threat (but no bomb) is a pretty mild response compared to what happened at this recent conference in Boston.

bookmark to:

The following appeared yesterday in Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac newsletter. Does it sound familiar to you?

It was on this day in 1864 that Abraham Lincoln was elected to his second term as President of the United States, an election that helped ensure the preservation of the Union. It was one of the only times in history that an election was held by a nation in the middle of a civil war.

Lincoln had a lot of reasons to worry the election might not go his way. The summer before the election, most Americans were weary of war, and calls to end the conflict were becoming louder and louder. Then, at the beginning of July, 1864, Lincoln was confronted with the embarrassment of a Confederate battalion trying to invade and capture Washington D.C. itself. The Confederates were driven off but not captured, and everyone who knew Lincoln at the time said he was in a terrible mood for the rest of the month.

In August, Lincoln announced that he would only negotiate peace with the Southern states if they reintegrated with the Union and if they abandoned slavery. This was the most radical position he’d taken on slavery yet, and it was so controversial that he began to lose support among his few allies in the Democratic Party, as well as members of his own Republican Party. There was talk that the Republican Party might try to nominate someone else. Lincoln worried that he’d made a terrible mistake, and so he didn’t say anything else about slavery for the rest of the campaign.

The war continued to go badly. On July 30, 4000 Union soldiers were killed in a disastrous attempt to invade Petersburg, Virginia. The army needed 500,000 more soldiers, Lincoln would probably have to call for another draft, and the war debt was becoming unsustainable. Even moderate Republicans began to criticize the president’s policies. On August 23, Lincoln wrote a memorandum to his cabinet that said, “This morning, and for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected.”

The Democratic Party held their nominating convention in the last days of August, and they chose to run on a platform of ending hostilities with the Confederate States. This turned out to be a huge mistake when, on September 4th, General Sherman announced that his army had captured Atlanta. At the same time, Rear Admiral David G. Farragut announced that he had captured Mobile, Alabama, the last major Gulf port in Confederate hands.

Suddenly, the Democratic Party looked like the party of surrender when the Union was on the verge of winning the war. In the end, Lincoln carried every state except New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky.

bookmark to:

I’ve been following the rioting in France rather casually. Yesterday I played a little game where I read several MSM stories on the subject and counted how many paragraphs into each article you had to read before the word “Muslim” or “Islam” or a similar variant was mentioned (note: the average was 5-6 paragraphs in). I saw a different and interesting take last night, however, on Jay Reding’s Single Malt Pundit blog.

Jay links a post by Gregory Djerjian that describes the riots not as a rising of Arab militancy but the predictable and crashing fall of the Socialist model and attempts of class equality. After citing a very interesting passage in Djerjian’s post, Jay says:

While it’s certain that radical Muslims are taking advantage of this situation, it wasn’t radical Islam that started it – it was the failure of the French social model that provided a perfect breeding ground for this terrorism. A state with an unemployment rate in the double digits cannot expect to have a stable and prosperous society. A society in which enterprise is systematically stifled by paternalistic regulations cannot hope to keep their level of unemployment down. A state with a low birth rate cannot sustain its economic base, but importing foreign labor and not assimilating them into society creates tensions. Everything about the current French societal model has led to this breakdown, and after 11 days the government is still looking powerless and confused.

For all the Gallic moaning about the terrors of the “Anglo-Saxon” model, their supposedly more “humanistic” French model has produced vast concrete ghettoes with levels of unemployment that makes the American inner city look positively prosperous in comparison. The state socialist model is failing in France, it’s failing in Germany, and the most prosperous parts of Europe are that way precisely because they’re either too small to experience the shocks of their larger siblings, or they’ve abandoned state socialism for free market reform.

For myself, I’ve wondered about how well coordinated the riots appear to be and if the escalation in violence by the rioters might not be an effort to provoke a violent response from the French government that can be leveraged into an even greater rallying point. I’ve also wondered if the French reluctance to impose even a curfew might not be driven by memories of the 1961 Paris massacre where largely peaceful protests by Algerians against curfews led to as many as 200 people being killed by police (and then complicitly hushed up for 30-odd years).

There are lessons to be learned from all of this, I’m sure, and Jay Reding’s and Djerjian’s takes should be part of the curricula.

bookmark to:

As Calvin would say, “I understand my tests are popular reading in the teachers’ lounge.”

What Calvin & Hobbes character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

bookmark to:

The image above from epodunk.com shows where the 3.2 million Katrina evacuees have ended up so far. It’s kind of interesting; hit the link for more details.



HT: Z + Partners blog.

bookmark to:

Also while I was on Amy’s site (see post below) I saw this link to an LA Times article about the liberal lawyers and judges who have worked with Justice Alito and support his nomination, including this comment:

Former federal Judge Timothy K. Lewis said that when he joined the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992, he consulted his mentor, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. The late Higginbotham, a legendary liberal and a scholar of U.S. racial history, was the only other black judge on the Philadelphia-based court at the time.

“As he was going down the roster of colleagues, he got to Sam Alito. I expressed some concern about [him] being so conservative. He said, ‘No, no. Sam Alito is my favorite judge to sit with on this court. He is a wonderful judge and a terrific human being. Sam Alito is my kind of conservative. He is intellectually honest. He doesn’t have an agenda. He is not an ideologue,’ ” Higginbotham said, according to Lewis.

“I really was surprised to hear that, but my experience with him on the 3rd Circuit bore that out,” added Lewis, who had a liberal record during his seven years on the bench. “Alito does not have an agenda, contrary to what the Republican right is saying about him being a ‘home run.’ He is not result-oriented. He is an honest conservative judge who believes in judicial restraint and judicial deference.”

Hmmm. Intellectually honest. Doesn’t have an agenda. Not an idealogue. Has apparently read the Constitution. No wonder Teddy, Chuck and Harry don’t like him.

bookmark to:

Thanks to Amy Ridenour I saw a post at Bizzy Blog detailing some of the WMDs that have been found in Iraq. What? You didn’t realize WMDs had been found? I wonder why that might be?

Bizzy Blog originally found the information at Atlas Shrugged (see link below) and posted it. When a commenter challenged the stories as being made up, Bizzy tracked down the links and included them:

Did you know this? From Atlas Shrugs (scroll to end of post), based on member-only information at Human Events Online (external links added in response to Comment 1 below):

Did you know WMDs have been found in Iraq?
* 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
* 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents
* 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas)
* Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas
* Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and “conventional” sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency

This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet, Americans overwhelmingly believe U.S. and coalition forces found NO weapons of mass destruction.

Weapons of Media Distortion, anyone?

bookmark to:

I left work early on this first weekday after going off of daylight savings time and hustled home to finish my preparations for Halloween. I made it just in time to get the cider heated and the fire built in the driveway as darkness fell and the first waves of trick-or-treaters began to circulate. It was a nice night and almost every kid said “thank you” which made it even more enjoyable to be outdoors.

While it was cozy next to the fire, I had time between visitors to think about the ever-shorter days yet to come. I also remembered reading about the effect on human sleep patterns after Thomas Edison invented the electric light. Before 1910 people averaged nine hours of sleep a night. Now that number is around seven and a half hours a night, but laboratory studies have shown that if people are deprived of electric light they revert to a nine hour sleep schedule. I don’t know if they’ve measured the effects of blogging on sleep patterns, but I’m averaging six hours a night since I started this blog.

I’m going to bed.

bookmark to: