Paternity

"Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen," by Larry McMurtry. Simon and Schuster. 204 pages. $21.Larry McMurtry loved his father.Now a real west Texas cowboy would never just come out and say such a thing. He might talk about his horse in affectionate terms, and he might cry at his old man's funeral, but you'd have better luck stealing his boots than getting a true cowboy to wax sentimental.McMurtry was almost a real cowboy. He spent 20 years helping his father raise Hereford cows on land more suitable for buffalo, but his passion was herding words, not cattle.

You don't hear the phrase the "man of the family" anymore. It's gone the way of Girl Friday and other remnants of a bygone, politically incorrect era. You remember the movies, though, of that time. The father is going off to war. Or, sometimes, he has a dread disease against which he has fought a valiant and yet inevitably unsuccessful fight.Anyway, it's your basic departure scene. Dad calls in the male child, cues the music and intones, "Son, you're going to have to be the man of the family now."

Great-Grandpa certainly didn't do it. Neither did Grandpa. But it just may be the norm by the time 1-month-old Noah Jeffrey Gifford is ready for fatherhood. Thanks, at least in part, to his dad, Brian Gifford. Gifford is one of a growing number of fathers who are taking paid paternity leave. In doing so, some say, these dads are helping to make it a more acceptable workplace practice. "Baby boomers really felt stigma about taking time off because they were seen as a slouch, or not the `go-to' guy at work," said Carol Evans, chief executive officer of Working Mother Media, a New York publisher as well as operator of the National Association for Female Executives.

Although it is not worth my time to respond to Richard L. Anderson'sname-calling, verbal abuse and implicit threats ("We expect Phillipsto show up"), his attacks on the civil rights of individuals with disabilities must be addressed.I should note that I have never met Anderson and have no knowledge of his individual or architectural credibility. However, his column (The Carroll County Sun, Sept. 15) not only reveals a paternalistic attitude toward persons with disabilities, but also contains inaccuracies as well as confusion about federal andstate laws.

It wasn't the economy. It wasn't stress. It wasn't mental illness. It hit me the minute I heard the news - it was ownership. When William Parente beat and suffocated his wife and two daughters before taking his own life, it wasn't just because his shaky financial dealings were about to come crashing down on him. And when Christopher Wood killed his wife and three children and then himself, it wasn't just because he was $460,000 in debt and depressed....

NEAR DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia -- When Maryland National Guard Spc. Bridgett Novak set out for the latrines in her desert camp late one night, a male colleague pulled his 12-inch Rambo-style knife from his sheath and insisted she take it with her.She politely refused.While building a defense bunker on the perimeter of the Guard's desert camp one recent morning, Specialist Novak wedged a sandbag along the roofline and packed it in tight. A buddy in her squad stepped up and placed another piece of wood on top of the sandbags to give Specialist Novak an extra bit of cover should the enemy start firing.

BOSTON -- Let us return to that wonderful yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Myra Bradwell couldn't be two things at the same time: a lawyer and a woman. On that occasion, Justice Joseph P. Bradley left a perfect entry for the Father Knows Best time capsule, circa 1873: "Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life." Justice Bradley went on to explain why this decision couldn't be in the hands of the woman.

Maryland's highest court will take up today The Case of The Crumbled Marriage, a divorce case so strange and steamy that names of the participants have been hidden in court papers as "Doe v. Doe."For the first time, the Court of Appeals will consider whether a cuckolded husband can sue his wife for fraud and distress for lying to him about the paternity of "their" children.A lot of money is at stake. In a divorce, spouses divide up only the property acquired during their marriage. But in a civil matter alleging harm, a spouse can go after all the other person's assets.

In a ruling that could affect Baltimore County's more than 2,000 male teachers, a federal judge has ruled that the school system discriminated against a kindergarten teacher by denying him a paid leave of absence to care for his newborn daughter.U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis said the county school system violated the U.S. Constitution and federal and state civil rights laws by denying the leave to 20-year teaching veteran Kenneth J. Shapiro while allowing female teachers to take paid child-rearing leave.

Several years before the Valentine's Day 1986 wedding, he had a vasectomy. She knew that.Several weeks after the wedding, she had a one-night stand with a stranger. He didn't know that.When the twins were born, his doubts about having fathered them aside, he raised no objection to his name on their birth certificates. He raised them for a decade -- even after the truth about infidelity and his doubts about paternity surfaced, when the twins were 5 1/2.But now, as the Glen Burnie couple divorce, the state's highest court is grappling with whether he can be forced to pay child support.