Menletter

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July 2004 Number 28

In this issue:

· Welcome, New Subscribers

· If It Moves, Shoot It

· Luck

· Men's Work - Not for Wimps?

· Book Reviews - A Request

· Guest Article - AIDS: Man's Worst Enemy

Welcome, New Subscribers

Welcome to some new subscribers - men who attended this years Men's Wisdom Council who were not already on the mailing list. The mailing list now numbers about 130.

For any matter having to do with subscriptions - subscribing to the e-mail version if you've been just a Web reader, changing your e-mail address, or unsubscribing - just drop me a line at menletter@aol.com. Nothing fancy - just tell me what you want. If you're a new subscriber, I'll need your first and last name.

Remember, I do not sell or otherwise share my subscriber list. You can see the subscription policies in the link at the top of this page.

If It Moves, Shoot It

Latest research on prostate cancer detection: Even if your PSA is low, you should follow up any sudden rise. Men who had a 2-point rise in PSA were ten times more likely to have a more aggressive cancer and die from it within seven years - even if they had the prostate removed. Some doctors are now recommending getting a base-line PSA at age 35 to 40. Follow-up testing if PSA rises (even if still below 4.0) can include a biopsy (uncomfortable but not fatal) and other less-invasive tests, such as the free-percent PSA blood test.

The rise in PSA is called PSA velocity, and doctors are concerned if it rises more than 0.7 or 0.75 in a year. (The usual PSA cutoff for further concern is 4.0; some urologists are considering a 2.5 cutoff for younger men.)

Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5387426/

http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/90/100584.htm?printing=true

Good overview of prostate cancer and testing options:

Can Prostate Cancer Be Found Early?

Luck

I am very lucky.

I broke my ankle when I was ten.

I've been plagued by chronic mouth sores since I was one.

I've been seriously overweight and out of shape.

I dropped out of graduate school.

I got my college girlfriend pregnant and had to marry her.

My career never really took off.

I've been fired and laid off.

My first marriage ended in divorce.

My home has been broken into three times.

One of my cars has been broken into three times; another car was stolen twice.

I've abandoned my religion. Twice.

I've been very close to being a chronic drunk.

My youngest son has Tourette Syndrome.

Both my parents are dead.

I'm in the middle of a lawsuit that could cost me my house and my retirement funds.

I have battled cancer.

Lucky?

Granted, many of the things on the list are chump change compared to the horrible things some people have gone through. But however long or short a list we might write, most of us could probably convince ourselves that we've had our share of bad luck.

What is luck anyway, and what does it mean to be lucky?

It might be useful to look at luck as simply anything that happens to us outside of our control. Good luck seems to award us with benefits we didn't deserve. Bad luck seems to plague us with pain and sorrows we didn't deserve.

What about luckiness or unluckiness? Are there people who are simply lucky or unlucky? Sure. We see that all the time. What's behind that? Is it karma, cosmic retribution, bad things happening to good people and vice-versa, manifestations of "Shit happens," or what?

What about people who make their own luck through hard work, attention to detail, ruthlessness, and so on?

I can't answer any of this. I just know that I'm lucky, often in spite of or because of some of the items on my list.

I wasn't always this way. For years I was convinced that luck was a more or less random phenomenon, and I came to terms with the fact that some people were a lot more and a lot less lucky than I was. And, gloomy guy that I am, I saw myself as less lucky than average.

But then I started noticing some strange things happening.

As I became older and perhaps matured a bit, I began to see that when I felt lucky, I got lucky. This had nothing to do with winning the state lottery ("I'm feeling lucky today!"). It had to do with a basic attitude that the events over which I had no control were neither good nor bad in themselves. In other words, they were neither lucky nor unlucky. They were just events.

These events could limit or expand my options, my freedom to make my way in the material world. But they could not limit my basic ability to choose how I would react. When I chose good luck, good luck happened.

I don't want to be misleading here. I am not happy or even serene when things happen that make me or other people suffer. Having cancer and undergoing the surgery and aftermath weren't exactly a picnic in the park. And I'm not numb to things that give me or other people pleasure. Having a fast recovery from the surgery and a surge of new energy was an unexpected delight. Seeing my wife and sons enjoy success and friendships gives me great joy.

But there's always this undercurrent of a sense that, in the long run, no event or series of events - lucky or unlucky - will define who I am.

Armed with that attitude, I tend to see myself as lucky, and I'm able to interpret many of my life events in a positive way. This is not optimism or a Polyanna-ish idealism. It's a kind of hard-eyed vision of my role in choosing to go forward no matter what and to be on the lookout for things to turn out favorably.

The flip side doesn't work out as well. When I've been on the lookout for things to turn out badly, I haven't been disappointed in my predictions.

I'd rather live the other way.

Men's Work - Not for Wimps?

Finding Emo

I've noted in the past that a lot of male initiation seems to take place in mid-life, when we get fed up enough with the way life isn't working out, when we're tired of the numb spots covering the wounds in our psyches and begin to poke at them. If we can re-open the wounds in ritual space, they can be come the wounds that mark our initiation into manhood.

I got a communication recently from a younger man, Jason, who has attended the Men's Wisdom Council for the first time. The Council is an annual week-long retreat for men, held in June in Rowe, Massachusetts. It allows men to explore, as deeply as they want to or need to, what it means to be a man, where they need to go on their journeys, and so on. The age range is from twenty to eighty, but the great majority of men seem to be in their middle years - say, 35 to 55 or so.

How does a younger man do men's work? Here's some of what Jason had to say:

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I had a blast as a first-timer [at Wisdom Council]. No doubt about it. But I'm still procrastinating going over my notes and really dealing with old habits. Nonetheless, change is afoot. When I got home to my girlfriend, Karen, she'd just gotten her quarterly issue of "Bust" magazine (a hip rag for twenty-something ladies). On the cover were the words, "Is your man a Wimpster?"

Oh shit, she's on to me! I snatched up the zine and read the article, and surprisingly, it was about a very particular trend among guys from the dawn of the slacker to the present. If you met me at Rowe and wished there were more young guys doing men's work, you're likely inviting a "wimpster" or two into the fold. Others in my age-range would describe wimpsters as emo-kids and Robert Bly fans would call them modern day self-hating "soft-men." They abhor machismo, but bear hostility toward women. I'll link the article below because you should know how many young men are dealing with (or not dealing with) their masculinity and how these two fed-up ladies are

responding with this article. In my opinion, this article is significant and provocative and could inspire young women everywhere to demand that their arrested development boys become men. For the record, this may apply to same-sex couples, but the wimpster boy generally preys on women.

Although I ended up identifying with a couple traits of the wimpster and hope to keep working on myself in those areas, I generally don't appreciate this kind of guy. They're too cool, aloof and smug. I asked Karen for her thoughts. She's had frustrating dating experiences with wimpsters and says I'm nearly the opposite of them. Reverse psychology, no doubt, from my very crafty lady. But anyhow, I wanted to share this article with you all to keep the dialog going about the feminine and the masculine. The article is both accurate, insightful, and challenging, while being cartoonish, simplistic and insensitive. So learn what is worth learning and holla back with your thoughts. For the record, . . . I think [the Wisdom Council] challenge[s] each of us to achieve a healthier balance than this wimpster breed of young men who're coming up (and often persist for decades).

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Here's the link Jason mentioned: Meet the Whimpster: Manipulative Asshole in Sensitive Guy's Clothing: http://www.blacktable.com/elder040212.htm.

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Jason (and Rachel Elder, who wrote the original Whimpster piece) provide a window into a world I wasn't familiar with. Oh, wait. If I take away the twenty-something jargon and gloss over cultural references I don't get (who the hell is Conor Oberst?), I can see a piece of the world I used to inhabit (and perhaps still do in some - I hope - minor ways).

Side comments from my 18-year-old son: Elder's just another goddamn feminist with an ax to grind. Real emos are just guys heavy into teenage angst, sitting in a corner crying into their sweaters, with no malicious intent. In three words: emo kids suck. Some girls need emos because they're nurturers who get off on bottom-feeders. Problem is girls who are pitiers.

Further communications from Jason, and my informal research (how did we ever survive without the Internet?) indicate that emo kids had their origin in punk rock. There's a particular style of dressing (I'd call it nouveau geek), a certain androgyny, and a definite anti-macho bias. Non-emo kids who are their contemporaries find them irritating at best.

Jason's warnings about encountering emo-kids (or over-age emo-kids) in men's work may be prophetic. Actually, I'm looking forward to it. We older (or more experienced) men will be able to model for these young men what the deeper masculine is about. Machismo may be out; but assertiveness, raunchiness, humor, and deep loyalty are in. Women are never the victims of men who truly claim their masculinity.

Book Reviews - A Request

I'd like to see some short reviews of "The Bitch in the House" by Cathi Hanauer (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060936460/qid=1089513521/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-2946982-1230466?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) and the follow-up "The Bastard on the Couch" by her husband, Daniel Jones (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060565349/qid=1089513521/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_2/002-2946982-1230466?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).

The books are collections of articulate essays on what was once quaintly known as the War of the Sexes. Jones's book in particular is both funny and poignant. If you've read one or both, write a 100-word (or so) review and I'll collect them in a future issue of Menletter. Send to me at Menletter.

Thanks!

Guest Article - AIDS: Man's Worst Enemy

Jerome Teelucksingh e-mailed me from Trinidad this month and asked if he could submit some articles for Menletter. He submitted three articles, and I have selected his article on AIDS.

Mr. Teelucksingh is a 31-year-old secondary school teacher who has been working for the past five years with men's organizations in Trinidad to promote the annual International Men's Day on November 19. He has also written articles for various men's magazines in Canada and Australia. He assists non-governmental organizations with seminars and workshops dealing with issues affecting men.

You may reach Mr. Teelucksingh at j_teelucksingh@yahoo.com.

I have started a new section on the Web site for occasional guest articles.

Go to his article in the guest section here.