Subject: Fun at the Movies
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 08:31:41 +1100

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Issue 171 - 5th November 2005 	Go to our website Here
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*	Welcome!
*	Grandads
*	Laughter
*	Single Dads
*	A Father's Loss: Daughter Killed by RU486
*	Thought of the Week
*	Special feature
*	News & Info
*	Dad's Prayer
*	About Us

Welcome!

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com/images/Santa_family.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.carnationtreefarm.com/g
allery.htm&h=960&w=1280&sz=561&tbnid=HFHN0RUpzAwJ:&tbnh=112&tbnw=150&hl=
en&start=7&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsanta%2Bfamily%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr
%3D%26sa%3DG>  

Last week I promised to share with you the Seven Secrets for Success but
I forgot to mention that there is an eighth secret.  It's called -
Having Fun Doing It!  Life is too short not to have fun and excitement.
The Seven Secrets for Success will have to wait. 

What in the world has happened to me?  I went to see 'The Chronicles of
Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'.  I had been waiting for
its release for months.  My wife had read parts of it to our children
when they were young.  When our daughter expressed an interest in the
Chronicles of Narnia my wife purchased the whole volume and read it
after our daughter had read it.  

The Chronicles of Narnia has become one of children's all time classics
with sales of over 100 million copies.  It is written by CS Lewis, an
Oxford scholar and friend of JR Tolkien, who is famous as the writer of
the 'Lord of the Rings'.  I was very impressed by the movies of JR
Tolkien's books and I was extremely interested to see what 'The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe' would be like.

I must confess to having a real scepticism surrounding anything that
comes out of Hollywood.  Even Disney has produced some pitiful
family-style movies over the last decade.  The fact that Disney was
associated with this move was not, for me, a good sign.  However the
film was produced by Walden Media and co-produced by Douglas Gresham,
stepson of CS Lewis, thus ensuring that it became an authentic
reproduction of the original book.  The director of the film was Andrew
Adamson who directed Shrek 1 & 2, clever and entertaining family-style
movies that worked at many different levels.

From the moment of first clutching the popcorn, side by side with my
wife and 13 year old daughter, I found the film enthralling.  The acting
is simply superb and the special effects brilliantly executed.  Even my
eldest son and wife, who also came, were bedazzled with this enchanting
fantasy that appeals to young and old alike.  My son and I are hard to
please when it comes to movies as we have produced over twenty TV shows
and are constantly evaluating production techniques and theatrical
content.  The bottom line is 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' is
an outstanding family-friendly film which I believe will become one of
the classic films of all time.

How so? Possibly because of CS Lewis' journey into adulthood. His early
childhood was relatively happy and carefree growing up in Ireland.  CS
Lewis (1898-1963) was an avid reader, 'Treasure Island' by Robert Louis
Stevenson being one of his favourites.  In 1908 his mother died of
cancer and his situation forced him into boarding school in England.  He
entered Oxford College in 1916 but soon found himself fighting in the
trenches in France in World War I.  He was sent home wounded and
disillusioned with the horrors of war, but quickly entered back into a
successful university life at Oxford, Cambridge where he became a
professor of literature in 1955 and a well known writer.  CS Lewis'
journey to the Christian faith from atheism is chronicled in 'The
Pilgrim's Regress'.  Together with JR Tolkien and others he formed a
creative group of writers who were united by their common faith called
'The Inklings'.  Lewis Carroll, author of 'Alice in Wonderland' was also
one of their number.  It would seem that this small group of highly
creative, deeply spiritual writers have been responsible for some of the
greatest literature, children's and otherwise, of the twentieth century.
Whatever the reason for the brilliance, 'The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe', as a movie, is certainly destined to be one of the movie
greats of all time.
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Lovework

If you haven't seen 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' go and see it
with your children/grandchildren, young or old.  My 13 year old daughter
says it's the best movie she has ever seen. Check out the following
websites for more information: www.narniaweb.com
<http://www.narniaweb.com/>  ; www.narnia.com <http://www.narnia.com/>
and www.talesofnarnia.com <http://www.talesofnarnia.com/>   

If you have already seen it, how about 'Cheaper by the Dozen II'!
Nowhere near as good as Narnia, but the firework's scene is great for a
laugh.  Remember 'life is too short not to have fun', besides, your
children need it and so do you!

Yours for more fun at the movies

Warwick Marsh

________________________________________________________

Warwick Marsh  has been married to Alison for 30 years. He is 
the father of five children, four boys and one girl, ranging in 
age from 25 years to 13 years.  Warwick is a musician, 
songwriter, producer and public speaker who likes to think he 
can still laugh at himself.

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Grandads

 
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The great man is he who does not lose 
his child's heart 
 
Mencius 

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Laughter

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John the farmer was in the fertilised egg business. He had several
hundred young layers (hens, called pullets) & eight or ten roosters
whose job was to fertilise the eggs. The farmer kept records & any
rooster that didn't perform well went into the soup pot & was replaced.

That took an awful lot of his time so he bought a set of tiny bells &
attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John
could tell from a distance which rooster was performing.

Now he could sit on the porch & fill out an efficiency report simply by
listening to the bells. The farmer's favourite rooster was old Butch, a
very fine specimen he was too. But on this particular morning John
noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate.

The other roosters were chasing pullets with bells-a-ringing. The
pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Farmer
John's amazement Butch had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring.
He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job & walk on to the next one.

John was so proud of Butch he entered him in the county fair & Butch
became an overnight sensation among the judges.
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The result?

The judges not only awarded Butch the "No Bell Piece Prize" but they
also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well...

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Single Dads

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02 January 2006 

<http://www.bosweb.com.au/content/EB3TemplateImages/771/shared%20parents
.jpg> Sydney Morning Herald

Shared parenting more a mirage than a breakthrough

By Waleed Aly

Changes to the Family Law Act may not be a victory for fathers' rights
groups after all, writes Waleed Aly. 

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, described the recent amendments to
family law as the most significant since the overhaul of 1975.

Such pronouncements may be music to the ears of fathers' rights groups
which have run an incessant, and often intimidatory, campaign against
the Family Law Act. A major grievance has been that the law gives
fathers limited time with their children because of inadequate contact
arrangements.

And to a degree, the Federal Government has responded. The bill creates
a presumption of equal shared parental responsibility, which requires
the court to consider children spending equal time with both parents
after separation. Most often this means the child would spend alternate
weeks with each parent. It was an idea floated as early as 2003 when the
Government proposed a presumption, not just of shared parental
responsibility, but of shared residence. This bill takes a more moderate
position, instead requiring a court only to consider such an
arrangement, but the philosophy is the same. 

It sounds like a significant win for fathers' groups, but there are good
reasons to suspect it will be little more than a mirage. 

For all the promise of a new, shared parenting future, the key
discretion remains with the courts. Shared living arrangements will be
ordered only if reasonably practicable and the court considers it
satisfies the paramount consideration: the child's best interests. 

Discretion is an inevitable feature of this area of the law. Family law
courts are faced with infinitely varied and complex scenarios that
continue to surprise even the most experienced judges. Rigidity in the
face of so much variety would lead to injustice. But historically,
judges have been reluctant to use this discretion to order equally
shared residence. Reported cases where a court has ordered such an
arrangement are rare exceptions - often with good reason. Shared
residence usually requires that the child moves weekly between two
homes. In early childhood, this is emotionally unsettling and it doesn't
get much better as children grow older. Courts have traditionally
accepted such instability is not in the child's best interest. The
solution is for the child to stay in one home, with the parents moving
in and out. But this requires three dwellings, which is well beyond the
financial reach of the overwhelming majority of Family Court litigants. 

As long as judges have a discretion to be exercised in the best
interests of the child - and not the parents - it is difficult to
envisage how this judicial aversion to shared living arrangements will
change. Certainly, judges will be required to consider them, but this is
easily satisfied by raising the possibility and explaining why it should
be dismissed because it is not in the child's best interests. Given the
problems associated with shared residence, it is unlikely to become a
common order. 

The new bill is about much more than children's living arrangements.
Because of the way the it has been described in the media, there is a
real risk it will come as a shock to the fathers' rights groups when any
changes to parenting are limited.

Right now, expectations will be dizzyingly high. The fall is likely to
be painful. 

_________________________________________________________ 

Waleed Aly is a lawyer and former legal associate to a Family Court
judge. 

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A Father's Loss: Daughter Killed by RU486

 

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Holly Marie Patterson 
August 29th, 1985 - September 17th, 2003 

Holly Patterson went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in California, on
September 10, 2003.  Holly was given the abortion inducing RU-486 pills
to expel her unborn child.  A week later, both Holly and her child were
dead. 

Monty Patterson, Holly's father, told the media, "The medical community
treats this as a simple pill you take, as if you're getting rid of a
headache. The procedure, the follow-ups, it's all too lackadaisical. The
girl gets a pill. Then she's sent home to 
do the rest on her own. There are just too many things that can go
wrong." 

The apparently 'safe, legal' abortion Holly was subjected to left her
with sepsis.  
RU-486 failed to fully expel her unborn child completely, and the
complications left Holly Patterson, aged 18, dead. 

For further information: www.righttolife.com.au
<http://www.righttolife.com.au/>  

Editor's Note:
We encourage you to write a letter against the legislation of this
dangerous human pesticide RU486, which not only kills our unborn
children, but has also killed at least 10 women internationally who have
taken it.   Your email submission must be lodged by 16th January 2006
with the Community Affairs Committee, [email-masked]
<mailto:[email-masked]>    Emailed submissions must
include your name, phone number and postal address.  Please also write
to your local member and state senators.  For more details on how to
write your letters and who to send them to please check out the Right to
Life website www.righttolife.com.au <http://www.righttolife.com.au/> 

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Thought of the Week

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The future is something which everyone reaches 
at the rate of sixty minutes per hour, 
whatever he does, whoever he is. 
 
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)     

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Special feature

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Critics dismiss 'Lion,' but kids don't

by John Kass 

Chicago Tribune

Published December 23, 2005

There were about a couple of hundred children in the suburban theater to
see the "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the movie based on one
book in the wonderful "Chronicles of Narnia" series by C.S. Lewis.

I took my 10-year-old twin boys to see it. The deal was we?d see the
film only after they had read the book. They read it, we talked about
it, and then the other night, we drove to the theater.

And what I saw there amazed me. On the screen, yes, but in the theater,
too. If you're a parent, or a teacher or have spent any time with kids,
you?ll understand:

There wasn't a peep out of all those kids during the movie.

There wasn't a sound. Perhaps that's because wonder doesn't have a
sound. But I could see it in the eyes of my boys, and in the eyes of the
other children.

Though some critics treated the movie fairly, many others gave it the
back of their hand.

It never got the buzz that it should have received, most likely because
C.S. Lewis delved into Christian allegory.

I understand. It's not Aslan the lion that threatens many who ridiculed
the film. Instead, what likely threatened them is the understanding of
who the lion would have been had Narnia been Earth, and the unyielding
message delivered almost 2,000 years ago.

But the kids weren't threatened. They and their families were of various
demographics, and presumably different religious backgrounds.

I don't think the children were thinking about allegory, or polemics, or
comparative religions, relativism, or culture wars.

They were watching a movie about children and a lion and a faun and an
evil White Witch, in a frozen land where there was never any Christmas.

And you could have heard the crickets chirping in the theater, if there
were crickets in December. You get the idea.

The behavior may have been quite different elsewhere. I?ll find that out
when we see the movie again over the holiday break, but on that night,
at an early evening show, the children were mesmerized.

Before we had the boys, I was an expert at child raising, with many
theories. Now, since I'm a dad, I?m no longer an expert in the
child-raising department. Many of those theories have been discarded.

Yet in my limited experience, the one thing I'm certain about is that
kids are not silent creatures in theaters.

They're full of questions and some are too used to talking, as if they
were watching TV, and some are compelled to kick their feet, or jab
their brother in the shoulder if the brother has filched too much of the
popcorn. Sometimes the older ones offer running commentary, adolescents
raising a shield against emotions thrown from the screen.

Surely you've witnessed such behavior. I have. As a kid, I engaged in
all of it at the old Coral Theater in Oak Lawn.

But that evening there wasn't any yelling, fidgeting or talking. There
wasn?t any need to put your forefinger to your lips and "shhh" them.

Throughout the movie, I kept peeking at the faces of my sons. They're
boys and were attracted to the battles and the action, because boys love
movie battles of all kinds, but it wasn't the swordplay and centaurs'
cavalry charge that will stick with them.

What will stick is the sense of gentle wonder in the film, from the
first step through the wardrobe into the snowy land on Narnia, to the
first tea and toast served by the faun, to the gracious manner in which
most characters addressed each other.

And what will stay with me was the pressure from my sons' hands on mine.
It wasn't during a great battle scene. There weren't any magic wands
involved.

It happened when Aslan the lion spoke quietly on the hillside with
Edmund, the boy who loved Turkish Delights, and who, through fear and
selfishness had betrayed his family, and was redeemed.

You could see Edmund talking with Aslan, but you couldn't hear dialogue.
That's when my sons, sitting on either side of me, squeezed my hands.

Aslan the lion fights evil, gives up his life to save others, is tried
by his enemies and put to death only to be resurrected and triumph over
the witch.

This apparently put some people off, but it wasn't as if the lion
carried a magic ring of evil that could destroy the world, and was
helped by elves and dwarfs and a wizard, the ring finally destroyed in a
river of molten lava.

It is not as if the lion went to an English boarding school to learn to
cast fantastic spells.

Those are other movies, and quite entertaining, as was this one. But
unlike the others, this one has Aslan, and all the children watching
that evening were in awe. 

________________________________________________________ 

This story was originally published in the Chicago Tribune.

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News & Info

 

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Warne wants to be a hands on Dad ?

I would quit everything for my kids ?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17759395-30977,00.html

_________________________________________________________

02 January 2006 
Sydney Morning Herald 

Antidepressants cut risk of suicide, studies find 
Treatment with antidepressant drugs appears to reduce the risk of
suicide in depressed teenagers and adults, new US research suggests. 
Read more
http://www.dadsindistress.asn.au/news328.html
<http://www.dadsindistress.asn.au/news328.html>  
___________________________________________________

Book Tip -  Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental
Alienation
Helps parents recognize the often subtle causes of alienation and
teaches them how to prevent or minimize its damaging effects. 
Read more
http://www.dadsindistress.asn.au/booktip_divorcecasualties.html
<http://www.dadsindistress.asn.au/booktip_divorcecasualties.html>   

__________________________________________

Letters 

Dear Fatherhood Foundation 
Hi my name is Laura, 

I am a 13 years old without a father. 
I think that you should stop the Fatherhood ads
on T.V because it does make me and most 
likely a lot of others sad. 

When it comes up with "every daughter needs her
father" that almost makes me cry. 

Please stop the ads on T.V because it is upsetting. 

Regards Laura  

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Dad's Prayer

 
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-2.gif> 
Dear God 
Help me to have fun. 
Life is such a serious business 
I can hardly bear it. 
That's why you gave me children . . . 
Oh God, stop laughing, 
You know it's rude to laugh . . . 
What I'm trying to say is 
It's hard to have fun 
When there are so many 
important things to do . . . 
Don't you remember what I told you 
three thousand years ago? 
'A cheerful heart is good like medicine'. 
Follow your children's example 
And you'll have no troubles! 

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About Us

Mission Statement & Help Us!

 
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Mission Statement 

The Fatherhood Foundation is a charitable, non profit incorporated
association with a goal to inspire men to a greater level of excellence
as fathers, by encouraging and educating them, thereby renewing and
empowering families.

Click here for more information about us
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Help Us!

The Fatherhood Foundation believes that the key to life is giving.
That's why this newsletter is given freely without expectation.  Life is
also about relationships.  That's what being a good father is all about,
developing relationships with your loved ones.
 
If you would like to give financially to the Fatherhood Foundation,
please mail your cheque or money order to:
Fatherhood Foundation
PO Box 440
WOLLONGONG  NSW  2520
AUSTRALIA

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