Parenting Magazine accepted this book excerpt as fit to print in their next (Sept) issue. It's from Not that You Asked by Steve Almond. If the title below was say, 6 ways this new mom killed her baby daughter, would they have still approved it?  Is it me?  Or is this really a cute dad piece?  I've already handed this off to the  proper authorities.

                  -- and --

    (and so on with Death 5 and 6)

Gotta love this: Here's the Miss Manners column syndicated in today's papers.  

Seems that this at home dad is tired of having his wife call him at work. 

 "Calls intrude on Mr. Mom's job"

I am a stay-at-home dad, and my wife calls often during the day. I love her dearly, and don't mind hearing that she loves me, but I hear about her day and problems. And while I am busy with our 3-year-old, holding the phone on my shoulder, I hear her typing something on her end.

I really feel insulted and upset. Is it poor manners to keep someone on the phone while you keep working?

I finally had to hang up on her yesterday when she called and kept me on the phone while I was trying to play baseball with our son in the yard, and she wasn't constantly talking, just coming up with spurts of what came to her as she Googled something.

She does ask about my day, but sometimes it seems an excuse, especially since she knows my schedule and calls at least twice a day.

 She wants to talk. It is just not easy to talk and care for a child, or play with him. She knows this intellectually. What can I do?

Miss Manners: Gentle Reader: What a nice reversal this is of "Honey, don't call me at the office."

Well, maybe not so nice, now that Miss Manners thinks about it. It sticks you with that insulting assumption that domestic work, including child rearing, is so unimportant as to be easily interrupted. And your wife clearly needs a more challenging job.

Ask her to e-mail you instead. And during the transition period, apologize that you didn't answer the telephone because you left it indoors when you were out playing baseball, can't hear it when you're running

Hogan Hilling, following up his past book "The Man Who Would be Dad" is now offering us "The Modern Moms Guide to Dads". During his "proud dads" program in California the moms were "confused by their husbands' behavior"   With this book due out in September he clears up the mysteries with "Ten Secrets Your Husband Won't Tell You". 

For those who haven't seem Hogan "perform" here's a profile on him from a 2000 At-Home Dad newsletter. Ill post a review when I can get a hold of a copy.   preorder

What started out as a small burgers and beer get together for a local Northern Illinois dad  turned has into a 5 state hoopla.  It seems that  Todd Krater's (the man behind the  amanamongmommies blog)  original plans spiraled out of control when he discussed his house party idea with his friends. One dad suggested he call it "Dadstock", another photoshopped the poster at left and suddenly he's got dads from 5 surrounding states (as far away as Massachusetts) promising to show up.  So if you are looking for  "a couple hours of piece and quiet" drop by Todds house on  June 30th, 2007. So far  no word if Neil Young will be showing up yet. details

I started digging into several boxes of  archives and began sorting and putting all my old At-Home Dad newsletters into .pdf format.

Here's the first (Spring 1994) issue, to start off the at-home dad archives. Since I only had a few subscribers for the first issue I sent 1200 copies of this issue to the media for free publicity.. The first to respond? Womens's Day!! (below), I offered a free issue and ended up stuffing envelopes for 2 weeks.....

 I don't like to post requests for media, and I've been swamped with them for Fathers day, but this is an exception. Marilyn Gardner was the first reporter to report on my newsletter back around 1996 and has followed up several times with well researched articles on at-home dads.. She's now looking to interview dads who are trying or have succeeded to get  back into the workplace after staying home with the kids for an extended time.. If you fit the bill, you can e-mail her at gardnerm@csmonitor.com

Growing Pains: Almost 10 years to the day after it started, Jay Massey has decided to take Slowlane off it's servers effective today and merge some of its content over to this site.  Before I get into details, here's a little history first.

 In April of 1991 Chris Stafford started the first hardcopy at-home dad newsletter Full Time Dads  out of his Brighton Minnesota home. (Stafford passed that project on to Steve Harris of Maine in 1993. more info.)  In 1997 Stafford started Slowlane.com, but still itchy to move along he passed it on to his friend Jay by the end of the year. 

 Jay used the resources and finances from his own company, Coco Design Associates and just stuffed the site with playgroups, articles,  book reviews, media stories and a forum. With the help of Joe Martin, Coco's co-owner (also an at-home dad) he quickly made it the online resource for at-home dads and expanded the site to a whopping 1200 pages and was getting over 2 million hits a year. In the years the site has been active Jay's has always said "its all about the dads" as he has generously offered his site to help others, whether it was  to help promote and host playgroups,  various author's or just a place for dads to show off their writing. (1n 1997 when Jay took over,  blogger was still 2 years away from inception)  Jay was also a fixture at the At-Home Dad Conventions (he was the only guy wearing sandals) and always offered his web expertise to anyone who approached him. At the second At-home dad convention Jay talked me into securing the athomedad domain name  before it was scooped up. Of course my initial pathetic attempt was no match to Slowlane.

Why these changes to Slowlane now? In the past several years it's 1200 pages became too much to manage, the message board became bogged down with spam and many of the playgroup links became obsolete. At the same time, Jay's son Tucker, and Coco design went though their own growing pains and something had to give. Even a few bloggers took exception of the slowdown.  I asked Jay about the slowdown of his site last week and some of the comments that were circulating.  "I don't blame them, I'd have said the same thing". He agreed that after 10 years Slowlane had served its purpose to give at-home dads a resource,  and it was time to move on.

(Jay at right with his crew and his new stomping ground) 

The only changes I have made so far were for the remaining playgroups that still relied on Slowlane for hosting. I have moved them to my servers and Jay has already re-directed these Slowlane links to mine so there will be no disruption. In the coming months, I will sifting through Slowlane's  pages and will move any relevant content to an archive section. Some of the archives will include past articles, and even articles from the At-Home Dad newsletter from the 90's.

I will keep you posted when I get the archive section up.  In addition, Jay will still be an important part of the at-home dad community as he has offered the resources of  coco design to help with any new ideas and changes that may help. So in the future I'll let you know if and of  at home dad pages are  "powered by Slowlane".  So here's to you Jay, a huge thanks for your past and future contributions to the at-home dad community and for being a good friend on the way. 

It was his grandfather who taught him how to use a super-8 camera when he was just nine. Shortly before he died, Dana Glazer pointed a movie camera at him and shot hours of footage of him telling stories of his life. Now his own 3 year old can dangle his feet off a chair and watch his own great-grandfather spin tales out of his computer. "We are moving into a strange blend of real and virtual memories" Glazer notes, "and once they are gone, they are gone" Dana's fear of losing these memories is why he's been running around his Hoboken, New Jersey apartment with his Panasonic HVX200 High-Def. clocking 250 hours of footage of his own two kids.

Tired of "doing things too Hollywood and depending on having people saying yes" Glazer has just started a three year project on an ambitious documentary titled The Evolution of Dad. "Not much of the 250 hours of the footage will be in it" he says "In fact not much of me will be in it ether." Instead, Glazer plans to show something akin to a Michael Moore film or the indy hit Supersize me,, "I want something with a a little grit, edge and a little progressive, not a groupy movie about dads, but how this country and corporate America impacts fatherhood and how it can be be improved on." 

In a written proposal about the movie Glazer writes, The aesthetic approach of the film will be a blending of traditional cinema verite, stock footage, home movies, on-the-street interviews, as well as time-lapse photography akin to the films Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi. The overall intention is to create a film that is mythic, personal and profound. 

We begin with a collage of images of fathers from our collective consciousness. JFK walking with his son. Ward Cleaver (From Leave It To Beaver.) Atticus Finch. Dustin Hoffman (in Kramer Vs. Kramer) Darth Vader. John Lennon. Mike Brady (The Brady Bunch) Will Smith (in Pursuit of Happyness) Don Corleone (The Godfather). 

Glazer will be using his website as a home base to slowly build interest in the movie. By Father's Day he hopes to have enough images sent to him by dads to show off on the site. Over the next few years he will start showing short clips that will make it into the final movie. When the film is completed he will offer the DVD for purchase which could lead to a theatrical release. If you'd like to get involved you can contact him here. For further updates you can check his blog.

No doubt this is a challenging project but given his past work and achievements, this promising director is one to keep an eye on.

Forget the mommy/daddy wars - Yesterday Linda Hirshman has launched this high brow food fight  with Rebel Dad (Brian Reid) at the TPM Cafe. Brian's crime?  He  spent under three years at home with one baby.....Once the second baby came Rebel took his rebellious self right into full time work in public relations, leaving his former lawyer wife with a newborn and a kindergartener.

Although this fight has history,  Hirshman's latest comments lead you to believe he practically abandoned his kids, when in my opinion he ranks pretty high on my involved-father-o-meter.  

After she was done bruising up Brian she spotted Daddy Dialectic's Jeremy Smith on the other end of the playground and started poking him with her stick:  Dialectical Smith didn’t even stay home a year, but lived exactly the life the mommy activists dream of. He posts: “You know, my wife and I tried [both working part time] (she . . . is fortunate to have a unionized part-time teaching job that provides full health care) and I must say that it was extremely difficult to maintain . . . I'm interviewing for jobs. For our family, it might better for one of us to work full-time while the other stays home . . . I'm sort of thinking that maybe it's my wife's turn to stay home.” A few hours later: “Well, for us the issue is resolved: yesterday I accepted a full-time job . . . Poof! I'm no longer a stay at home dad and now it's my wife's turn to stay home -- actually, she's still thinking about whether she wants to go back to work. I hope she doesn't; I want her to have time with the boy.” Poof. I’d hate to be the woman with the desk next to Dialectical Dad, taking family leave while he minds the workplace. 

Geez Linda! Brian and Jeremy have both presented  fair arguments, regarding your basic creed of choice feminism and you have to get into a verbal fist fight.  Now I have been home for the last 14 years, with 2 boys while my wife works as a school teacher... does that make me a better father or am I being more fair to my wife than Brian or Jeramy? Well for my family I am, and for their families yes,  we all have a parent at home, which is the best family balance you can have. 

It's important that when couples decide who's staying home to do diapers,  they make the best choice for them and their kids, not for any social agenda or statistical conclusions that's created. Yes it is taking a long time to achieve the equality that you are reaching for. And if we get there great,  but lets concentrate on getting at least one parent to stay at home first, not which sex stays home.