Monthly Archives: September 2013

Posted in Sports

The Importance of Violent Sports?

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It was third down and 18 yards. The running back was pulled out. Everyone in the stadium including my dog watching the game on TV at home knew it was an obvious pass play. The ball was snapped. The receivers scrambled deep down field taking a swarm of defenders with them. The defense had backed off a mile leaving the right flank grand canyon open. The quarter back went through a fake throwing motion and then tucked the ball under his arm and scrambled for the long 18 million miles. The 2 nearest defensive backs froze as they realized it was a designed play and steamed toward the quarter back. I was standing three feet from the point of rendezvous near the sideline trying to get the best photo action of my amateur life. As the two goods trains approached horning on the hapless quarterback, I instinctively backed off for my own safety as in a split second I saw and heard a massive earth shaking collision as the three massive colliding bodies landed out of bounds with the target quarter back sprawled on his back. There was a collective ooooh! from the crowd. I had visions of an ambulance. But I was surprised as the quarterback sprung up instantly and ran back to the huddle. The crowd clapped. The team had made a risky an unexpected first down.

ViolentSportsThe fall football season is here as thousands of Americans play the game and millions enjoy watching the game from coast to coast from pewee football for small boys, to high school, college and the professionals. The game is so violent that the National Football League has just agreed to pay close to $800 million to pay thousands of retired players for dementia or other brain injuries including concussions they blame on the violent, bone-crunching collisions. In spite all the known dangers, why do men and boys still subject themselves to such a violent and dangerous game?

The explanation and answer for some among the politically correct public may be that men just need to tone down their extreme dangerous testosterone -induced reckless machismo that puts themselves and society at grave risk. But this solution may create even more and worse problems. Although  boys, men, girls, and women may all have a competitive desire, the vast majority of boys and men may have a unique biologically based testosterone-driven aggressive drive that probably reaches its peak between the age of 16 and 28.

This author had a least athletic, puny, malaria and schistosomiasis-tropical disease ravaged body as a boy as a late blooming teenager. But out of the blue at the age of 19 the aggressive drive compelled him in college to try playing rugby and soccer. He even tried boxing for only about 60 seconds. The best thing that happened was at the age of 20, he attended the intense three months National Service military boot camp training with 300 other University of Zambia students. His body and mind were pushed to the limit. As he was being interviewed a few years later by an African-American counselor official to get his visa to come to graduate school, the official asked him if he would be playing American football. The official must have been joking as the author weighed a miserly 120 lbs, and waist size 29.

The concussions and life threatening injuries including the danger of sometimes training in 100 degree dangerous seething heat with hardnosed barking coaches during the football season will not go away. Instead, society and communities should create better legitimate opportunities for everyone but especially boys and men to express their testosterone -induced aggressive drive. This aggressive drive may have helped human communities survive during the earlier stages of human evolution. But that drive will not just go way. If it is suppressed unnecessarily, it may be expressed in other more dangerous, harmful and dysfunctional ways for communities.

September 17, 2013 – by  Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D.

Posted in Love and Romance

What Makes Marriages & Families Endure?

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Ten thousand miles away in a remote village in Lundazi rural district of Zambia in a grass-roofed house, the cell phone rang a couple of times. The distinct voice of my younger brother said: “Here is Adada.” I said hello in my mother Tumbuka  African tongue. When Dad responded, I needed not shout as his voice was as clear as though he was calling from my neighbor’s house. After exchanging a few words, I asked to talk to my mother. Dad said she was busy in the kitchen cooking one of her delicious meals for supper. I forgot it was noon Eastern American time but about 6:00pm in Zambia. I asked that she come to the  phone. Her unmistakable sweet voice said she was cooking my favorite traditional zumba or chekwechekwe delele vegetable cooked with fresh peanut powder. I asked if she could send me some. She paused and  laughed. It might get bad before it got there in America she said. We laughed.

The phone call was over and I was floating in the stratosphere feeling high on cloud nine with sheer joy all afternoon. Although hearing their voices lasted perhaps about 2 minutes, the new just installed cell phone tower 4 miles away from the village made it all so much easier. All afternoon I began to contemplate the sheer mystery of such wonderful lives of my dad who is 89 and my mother who is 85. I will marvel forever where they got the strength and endurance to be married for 67 years raising nine children and now in the twilight of their blessed lives glowing in the collective love of numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren.

After the struggle of raising my own few children and the monumental problems that seem to explode into divorce today when couples may have at the most two children, what did it take in those past generations to raise nine children with grace, resilience and joy which is difficult to see anywhere to day?

I am certain my parents faced monumental challenges in their marriage; 2 siblings died, there were intractable difficulties in providing food and educating all the children. There were serious illnesses. My parents probably didn’t have that sparkling romantic love for each all the time. They were not rich. But they sure adored each other.  But what kept them together such that they could raise nine children and have their children be descent human beings?

The answers are not in our present women’s liberation Betty Friedan “Feminine Mystique” based  rational thought that says if you and your spouse love each other and each bring closely monitored  50% to the relationship, then you can be married and raise children until death do us part. These may not be enough as shown by high rates of divorce of 50% for first marriages, 67% for second and 74%  for third marriages in the “me” centered marriages  to day.

The best analogy I could find that may best help us understand how marriages and families may endure is to think of both of them sharing the same swimming pool. When the two say their vows they jump into the pool and begin the life long process of swimming continuously to stay afloat alive. Expressing love and sacrifice means, when one is in danger of drowning the other has to help. As the children are born and growing the parents together  have to help keep the children’s heads above water. Sometimes as the parents  go through the ups and downs of the ferocious waves of life, they may swim and drift apart but they are always in sight of each other ready to help or just make sure the other is alright. It is that crucial sense of deep love for each other and the unflinching parental collective sacrifice for everyone in the family that makes it possible for marriages to endure and for parents to raise children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. This brings unspeakable joy to all the people in the entire family. I felt that joy from talking to my parents who were ten thousand miles away.

This article was also published in the Forum of The Daily News-Record Newspaper on September 14, 2013

September 17, 2013 — by  Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D.