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Book of the Month... October 2003 |
My Losing Season
by Pat Conroy
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“I was
born to be a point guard, but not a very good one. . . .There was a
time in my life when I walked through the world known to myself and
others as an athlete. It was part of my own definition of who I was
and certainly the part I most respected. When I was a young man, I was
well-built and agile and ready for the rough and tumble of games, and
athletics provided the single outlet for a repressed and
preternaturally shy boy to express himself in public....I lost myself
in the beauty of sport and made my family proud while passing through
the silent eye of the storm that was my childhood.”
So begins Pat Conroy’s journey back to 1967 and
his startling realization “that this season had been seminal and
easily the most consequential of my life.” The place is the Citadel in
Charleston, South Carolina, that now famous military college, and in
memory Conroy gathers around him his team to relive their few triumphs
and humiliating defeats. In a narrative that moves seamlessly between
the action of the season and flashbacks into his childhood, we see the
author’s love of basketball and how crucial the role of athlete is to
all these young men who are struggling to find their own identity and
their place in the world.
In fast-paced exhilarating games, readers will
laugh in delight and cry in disappointment. But as the story
continues, we gradually see the self-professed “mediocre” athlete
merge into the point guard whose spirit drives the team. He rallies
them to play their best while closing off the shouts of “Don’t shoot,
Conroy” that come from the coach on the sidelines. For Coach Mel
Thompson is to Conroy the undermining presence that his father had
been throughout his childhood. And in these pages finally,
heartbreakingly, we learn the truth about the Great Santini.
In My Losing Season
Pat Conroy has written an American classic about young men and the
bonds they form, about losing and the lessons it imparts, about
finding one’s voice and one’s self in the midst of defeat. And in his
trademark language, we see the young Conroy walk from his life as an
athlete to the writer the world knows him to be.
Read Excerpt
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GUEST ARTICLE...
by Glenn Sacks
Convicted Murderess Can Get Custody but Decent Fathers Can't
Clara Harris,
a Texas woman who was convicted of murdering her husband in March,
was just granted joint custody of her twin five year-old boys. The
ruling validates what fathers' and children's advocates have been
saying for years--when it comes to children, many courts believe
that mothers can do no wrong.
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Give Your Kids Their "N" Medicine
We deal with a certain amount of frustration in our everyday adult
lives. We are frustrated at our jobs, in our relationships, and by
circumstances that we
have no control over. Over time we learn to handle frustration and
to transform it into challenges that we work through. People who can
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COYOTE...
monthly column by Dick Prosapio
Lookin' at North Platte
Whenever we're on-the-road I tend to
collect a few of those glossy handouts from the racks set up in
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attract me, those that seem incongruous or laughable given the reality
of the territory. It's not that most of these places aren't worth
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even by the notoriously low standards used by teenagers to give value
to just about everything.
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Riding High
The Victorian Gardens in Central Park is a
cute amusement park for kids under five, with rides like Family
Swinger, Circus Train, Red Baron, Crazy Trolley, and the Samba
Balloon. This will be my first visit with both boys.
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Guest Article...
by Dr. Linda Neilsen
Disenfranchising, Demeaning, and Demoralizing Divorced Dads : A Review
of the literature - Part one
In our
country today only 50% of children under the age of 18 live in the
same home with their biological father. Roughly 15% live with their
mother who has never been married; 15% with their divorced mother who
has not yet remarried, and 18% with their mother and stepfather. Only
2% live with their father and stepmother. By the year 2000 it is
estimated that only 25% of white children and 10% of black children
will live in a home with their father until the age of 18, while 40%
will end up living with their mother and stepfather. Put differently,
within the next few years the majority of fathers will not be living
in the same home with their children - and even now, the majority of
fathers and teenaged children are not living together.
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Guest Article...
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Confronting
Prison Rape
A bright light is about to be shone
on an almost unseen social problem: prison rape. On September 4th,
President Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which
provides for an annual Department of Justice review on the rate and
effects of prison rape. Why should you care?
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MENSIGHT Magazine is another free service of The Men's Resource
Network, Inc. (MRN). It has grown out of the response that we
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TheMensCenter.com (TMC), our official web-site. The
first issue went on-line on May 1, 2000. (Archive)
MENSIGHT is dedicated to publishing diverse
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MENSIGHT will publish articles, stories and
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we do not necessarily agree with every position that is
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We hope that you will be entertained,
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