Showing posts with label father's day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label father's day. Show all posts

Sunday, June 21, 2015

I'm remembering Daddy On Father's Day By Sandy Semerad


 A Message in the Roses
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON
  
What do Dads want on Father’s Day?
The number one answer, according to a recent survey, is spending time with family and loved ones. Number two is clothing. Beer is number three.
This survey may not be scientific, but I agree with the number one answer. I wish I could have spent more time with my Dad.
As a child, I was afraid of monsters and would often sneak into my parents’ bed at night. After I fell asleep, Daddy would carry me back to my bed. One time he didn’t.
That was the night he died. I was seven.
The next morning, I found Mama crying in the living room. Our house was full of people. Many of them were crying also.
“Where’s Daddy,” I asked Mother.
“He’s gone away,” she said.
Daddy looked handsome in the shiny casket, but asleep. I didn’t understand he wouldn’t wake up. He died of a heart attack, I was told.
Before Daddy died, he’d complained of a backache, and I remember he came home early one afternoon to rest his back. Mama told me not to bother him.
But I couldn’t resist. I sat on his bed and chattered away, as he puffed on a cigarette. I can still see his pack of Camels on the bed stand.
Daddy rarely came home early. He worked most of the time. He wanted to give us the so-called finer things in life: a large brick home, a fishing pond, a swimming pool, tennis courts and our own merry-go-round.
Friends from Geneva, Alabama who knew Daddy, called him--Ira Hodges--an entrepreneur. He owned Hodges hardware in the heart of town, but before he married Mama and moved to Geneva, he was a Texas wildcatter--an oilman.
One of my Geneva friends, John Savage, who as a teen worked with Daddy, said he thought Daddy seemed too big for a small town.
But Daddy loved Geneva, Mama said. He’d often give credit on a handshake, and he helped many people in need.
Daddy once repaired the broken windows in a family’s house for free. “It was freezing and we couldn’t afford to pay,” the father of the family told me.
Many years after Daddy passed, I spotted a strange figure, wandering around our house. I froze in fear. Mama wasn’t home at the time.
I called police before I realized the man wasn’t a stranger at all. He used to work for Daddy, but had since moved away from the area. He didn’t know Daddy had died, he said.
“Whenever I needed work, Mr. Ira would always give me some,” the man said.
I’ve told my daughters and granddaughter this story and other stories about Daddy. I want them to know he was compassionate. He helped people and gave generously of his time and money. I only wish he could have shared more of his time with us.
I’ve missed not having him in our lives, and on this Father’s Day, I wanted to pay tribute to him. #Father’sDay.
To find out more, go here: www.sandysemerad.com







 Hurricane House

 Sex, Love & Murder

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Hey, Dad! It's Your Day by Tia Dani



                                                                         http://amzn.com/B00EVXABV0

When we decided to write about Father's Day, a friend, father of two and a non-romance writer, asked, "How can Father's Day have anything to do with writing a romance novel?"

"Au contraire," Tia replied. "Fatherhood could have much to do with it." She mentioned books where the beloved heroes were raising a child or children...and how it only took a heroine's arrival to sweeten the mix. And, of course, men, who weren't fathers, but became one under unusual circumstances. She proceeded to inform him about Secret Baby books.

He shook his head. "Secret babies? You're kidding, right?"

"Nope." She grinned. "There are even stories where the heroine (the mother) doesn't know when or how her baby was conceived."

"Oh." He walked away totally befuddled.

We loved it. Befuddling men is fun.

Let's take a look at the special day that venerates those proud, paternal-driven papas. Fathers have been around since Adam first fertilized Eve, but, it wasn't until the early1900's ministers and women's magazines seriously touted the righteousness of fatherhood. Whatever for we have no idea. We decided to go look into the reason.

It began with Mr. William Jackson Smart. His daughter, Sonora Smart (a neat first name, isn't it?), aka Mrs. John Bruce Dodd of Spokane Washington, came up with the idea in 1909 while listening to a Mother's Day sermon (a holiday which originated two years earlier.)

Sonora, along with five brothers, had been raised by their widowed father, a Civil War veteran. Following the death of his wife in childbirth, Smart struggled to work his eastern Washington farm, while keeping his children clothed, fed and properly reared.

Mr. Smart, an admirable man, considering in the early 20th Century men frequently lost their wives to childbirth. The majority remarried quickly so they wouldn't have to care for children, specifically newborn infants, alone.

Widowed men, often farmers, looked for a widow with children. Marrying her, he not only had a woman seeing to his home and children, her offspring were needed help with the never-ending farm chores. Many second marriages turned into genuine love, others didn't, but both ways, more children were born and families often grew as large as 6 to 15 kids living at home at one time. Now, that's what we call being a fertile father.

Sonora Dodd's proposal was met with enthusiasm by local ministers. The date suggested was the fifth of June (William Smart's birthday), but many of the ministers needed more time to write their sermons, so the celebration was moved to the 19th, the third Sunday of the month.

Word spread and newspapers across the country endorsed this new holiday. One notable supporter to Mrs. Dodd's idea was orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan. He wrote "...too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child." However, even with notable support and the holiday being accepted across the nation, members of the all-male Congress at the time felt to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back. (Go figure, huh?) So the holiday remained a minor one.

But it didn't remain a silent one. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the holiday, and President Calvin Coolidge wrote in 1924 that states, if they so wished, should do whatever they wanted as far as celebrating the holiday.

In 1937, New York City founded a National Father's Day Committee and decided to choose a theme for each Father's Day and select a Father of the Year.

In 1957, Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote to Congress saying Americans should honor both parents. To single out just one and omit the other was "...the most grievous insult imaginable."

Yet, it wasn’t until 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June to be identified as Father's Day. In April of 1972, President Richard Nixon signed it into Public Law 92-278.

How about that? It took 62 years for fathers to be officially recognized!

Go...Dads!

Here's a bit of trivia for you. Did you know the Romans observed a Father's Day, every February...but...just for dead ones. Think about it. It could be an interesting twist for a Secret Baby story.

Here's some of our family photos. 




Tia's great-grandparents, George and Katharina Meir (later changed to Meyers) because my great-grandfather wanted to sound more American.
Katharina married George after he lost his first wife, leaving him with two children. Katharina too was a widow with three children. All together they had 10 children.  And, yes, they had a large farm. Everyone worked. Including my grandmother, Elizabeth. Despite she was a girl, she worked along side her father out in the fields


Tia with her dad. Note bandage on my chin. Fell off a stone ledge and split open my chin. Had to have stitches. What can I say, I was quite a rough and tumble kid.


 Grandparents JW and Emma Eaton. Emma was also a second wife. However they didn’t live on a farm. My grandfather owned a barbershop and ice cream parlor. Can’t remember if my grandmother had been married before. I don’t think she had been. But between them they had quite a few children. Can’t remember right now what the total was, darn it. What I do remember my dad was the last one born.

                                                                       Dani and her dad.
            Yes, I'm the little baby he's holding. Uncle Hershel sitting on the curb. This is in southern California.
                                                                                                                                           

Dani's grandparents.
Grandpa H.L Christian and his second wife, Mae. Grandpa had 6 kids when she married him and together they had 6 more including my mom. The little girl in picture is my mother. All worked the farm in Arkansas.





To find out more about the writing team Tia Dani and our books visit us at:

Sunday, June 15, 2014

A Study of Men's Facial Hair in Honor of Father's Day

By Michelle Lee
BWL Art Director

If you've been on facebook in the last year, then you have probably seen the results of a study that had been done on men's facial hair and what women find attractive.  Given that the results were only gathered in one country, the scientist in me questions a little bit the overall validity of it, since each culture (and sub-culture, as well as each country) has their own ideas of beauty and what is attractive.  Other "groups" since then have conducted their own "studies", but I am not going to go into all of the various different findings.

Instead ... let's take a look at some different images and see what we, as authors, readers, and cover artists from all over the world think is sexy (or attractive).

Exhibit A:

This is one of the images used in a study of men's facial hair.  Which option, 1-5, do you find the most attractive?

* * *

Exhibit B:
How about in this image, between options 1 and 4?

* * *

Exhibit C:
This is one of my favorite images for looking at a contrast between clean shaven, stubble, and a mustache.  Although the study didn't address mustaches, when looking at male facial hair, it needs to be considered (I think).

Well?  Which one?

* * *

Ok, so let's consider a few different examples, shall we?

How about Ben Afleck?


Bradley Cooper?


Ryan Gosling?


George Clooney?


Liam Hemsworth?



Well?

Some articles on the study:   Article 1   *   Article 2   *   Article 3

If you are interested in reading the actual study article, here is the citation information.
The role of facial hair in women's perceptions of men's attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting abilities, Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 34, Issue 3, May 2013, Pages 236–241.

* * *


One final thought ...



Popular Posts

Books We Love Insider Blog

Blog Archive