HerKind.com

This is why I dislike zoos, and in fact, refuse to visit them:

Activist questions zoo safety after lion kills eagle, Canada.com

The thing to know about this incident at The Greater Vancouver Zoo, is that the golden eagle was bred in captivity and the falcon exhibit was being held very close to the lion enclosure when the lion attacked and ate it.

The zoo is saying this is something that happens in nature, but zoos are not natural habitats for the animals that they hold, nor can animals exercise their natural instincts in zoos. So the construct is wrong in the first place and I can only imagine what it does to animals to be so contained. Sure alot of them were rescued, but that really is besides the point to me. I just don't like the idea of zoos, never have, children can learn about animals without visiting a city zoo (even if it has what might be considered an appropriate amount of open space).

As a kid, I visited all the usual animal zoos and exhibits. My dad, a sometime father, thought going to Marine Land or African Lion Safari was a good weekend bonding excursion for us kids. Not so much for me. I hate seeing anything caged or unable to live its own true and natural life. I'm sure my discomfort was mistaken for fear and maybe it was easier to express it that way than to have the guts at a young age to take a stand on such things. Thankfully kids today have more of a voice.

The little girl who's father took the photos of the entire lion/eagle incident was traipsed out in all the media saying how she was sad because the golden eagle was her favourite animal. That's all well and good, and poignant and paper-selling, viewer-friendly stuff. But who's going to explain to her that indeed these things do happen in nature, but that the zoo is hardly nature and that poor bird, born and bred in captivity didn't stand the chance it may have if it had learned, in the wild, how to steer clear of predators.

It's all mixed up in that crazy way of the modern world where things that don't make any sense and that are actually quite cruel, end up being acceptable.

If you're in the market for a divorce party, you should know there's a growing demand for "revenge cakes."

That means it shouldn't be too hard to find a tiered caked with the bride up top wielding a knife and the groom at the  bottom covered in blood.

How cute!

That doesn't bother me that much... the marketplace often rises up to meet the  need for novelty products. What rankles me, and has done for a very long time, is the way the reporting of such things is so entirely bias towards women and against men. As in paragraphs like this from a recent Toronto Star article:

"They didn't want to see his face, but they wanted to see this hideous gold grill he used to wear," the baker says of the former husband. Wielonda set to work, and the result was a two-dimensional cake in the shape of a man, with a paper bag covering his head save for a small cutout showing a gold tooth decoration. All around were the marzipan weapons."

Earlier in the article it was explained that the husband had turned out to be "a jerk."

Look, we all make mistakes in relationships... some of us marry them. But why is there such a common public assumption that when a union turns sour that it is ALWAYS the man's fault. What about just taking responsibility for a poor choice and moving on?

Frankly, I've grown tired of our social culture replicating one long episode of Sex and the City.

C'mon, let's let men off the hook sometimes, give them credit for being human although different than us (which is half the fun isn't it?) and let them have their dignity back instead of continually finding ways to emasculate them.

I'm terrified of thunder and lightning. I'm not kidding. So, as you might have guessed, it hasn't been the greatest week for me with thunderstorms travelling through southern Ontario every other day, sometimes all day!

And does anyone know why there's always a cacaphony of sirens that begin as soon as the storm breaks out? That really isn't helpful!!

Like all irrational phobias, fear of thunder and lightening has a name, or several: Astraphobia, Astrapophobia, Brontophobia, Keraunaphobia, Ceraunophobia or Tonitrophobia.

Whatever.

It's all the same to me.. I see the lightning, hear the thunder and want to hide under the bed with the cat.

But what's behind it, I wonder. And have been wondering all week, while I endured my anxiety and prayed for it, and the storms, to pass quickly. Anyone who's lived with anxiety and panic probably gets what I've been dealing with. It's  annoying and frustrating to have to fight with my anxious mind for control. Intellectualizing doesn't help. I've come up with a million reasons that make me feel more jittery.

What starts with the storm becomes fear of the fear response, conjuring every emotional and physical worry I have - an unfortunate cycle.

Exhausting.

Worse, you feel too silly to tell anyone what you're going through, and if you do you downplay it so as not to make them worry. And anyway, noone can help you wrestle your demons, whatever they are. What can anyone possibly do for you during your wee hour anxiety attack, that has you not sleeping and not breathing very well either.

And all this because of a series of silly storms. What I know about my anxiety is that it is situational and usually has to do with not feeling enough ground under my feet. Try as I might to figure out if that's what's going on here, I really don't think so. Things are ok - transitiional, perhaps a little uncertain - but ok.

So, it has to be the damn storm itself.

I remember only one terrible storm as a kid. It was probably a day alot like this one, sunny to start, not a cloud in the sky - why not go for a picnic? We might have been at Christie Pitts (which seemed alot bigger back then) or Sunnyside Park, I'm not quite sure of the locale because I doubt I was much more than five or six.  When the thunder and lightning broke out, we took shelter under a tree. Bad idea... and although the worst thing to happen was my drenched peanut butter sandwich, there is something about that storm that has stayed with me. I sure do remember screaming and crying and probably making my mother crazy.

Sometime between then and now I forgot a little about my fear of storms. Maybe because living out west, where the rain can sometime be interminable, there is hardly any thunder and lightning. Everything about living there was even and moderate, one of its main recommendations.  I spent so much of my life before that living in extremes that Toronto weather seemed to mimic, and exacerbate.  The reliability of the steady rain, sunshine without humidity, and slowly climbing or descending temperatures helped settle me down.

That would probably sound crazy if it wasn't so true.

I think that's why I get so upset during a storm. It feels like so much pressure building and then releasing and that is a feeling I no longer want in my life.

You can't live somewhere just because you like the weather. Or can you?

My years-long estrangement from my father meant that I rarely acknowledged Father's Day until we "made up" a couple years before he died - an eventuality that I am often heard saying saved my life.

Why do I characterize it that way?

Well, when you find it in your heart to forgive the person who caused you the most pain and uncertainty in your life, it's nothing short of a blessing. When he somehow finds it in his heart to meet you halfway, even better. The result is feet a little firmer on the ground, ground a little firmer beneath your feet.

It doesn't change the history of the relationship but you can find out some things that give you the perspective you need to change the way you see him, and then, of course, all men. The father/daughter dynamic paves the way for all her relationships with men, no doubt about that.  Find the guy most difficult to please, the one most emotionally unattainable. That was my legacy... up until very recently.

There has been nothing more important to my self-esteem than finding out that my Dad really did love me after all. Not only that, he respected and admired the person I became. I never would have known this had I not opened up my mind and heart toward and not against the acceptance I  most wanted.

What a relief!

I've been doing alot of reading and writing about fathers and sons because of a literary project I'm working on. It's a vital relationship and the lack of it can be debilitating for boys and young men. Yet father absence is at epidemic proportions in North America. On the other hand, many fathers are now heading up single parent families, a rather unacknowledged fact in our culture. Both states of existence need more attention. The father's banished from their families, replaced by other men, wrongly accused of abuse to secure custody arrangements against them, those who have died leaving sons in unexpressed turmoil - no matter the circumstances, sons pay the price.

The 2006 Census unearthed these stats: 281,406 one-parent families are headed by men, representing about 20 per cent of Canada's 1.4 million one-parent families.  That's a 14.6 % increase since the 2001 census.

News media fall all over themselves these days to decipher and explain trends... why not these?

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For more Father's Day thoughts please look at my other website, Lonely Boy / sons without fathers

This is an interesting interview in the Toronto Star today with French writer Corinne Maier, author of No Kids: 40 Reasons Not To Have Children. I like the questions Antonia Zerbisias asks. Just like the Toronto Life article Baby Wars, on how the stroller mafia is changing Toronto communities, these ideas could only be put forth by someone who has had children. But at least they get out there. I like to remind people that , according to Stats Canada, married with children is now in the minority but rarely do we see anything other that that status reflected in our media.

Je Regrette: French mother argues that having children ruins romance and relationships

Q: My neighbour says that I should be grateful that she had children because her kids will grow up to pay the taxes to pay for my health care and pension.

A: That is ridiculous. The answer is immigration. If we need people, we should accept people from outside the county to work and to pay the pensions. We don't need to make the children ourselves. It costs a lot to society, in fact, to add to the overpopulation.

Q: I've heard people say it's very selfish not to have children. Would you agree?

A: No, not at all. Very often families are selfish because they are closed to the outside world. And some parents want their children to behave just like them. Isn't that selfish?