{"id":356,"date":"2009-03-19T04:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=356"},"modified":"2009-03-19T04:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T08:30:00","slug":"quality-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"Quality Men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family:verdana;\"><i>Qual-i-ty:  [kwol-i-tee]   noun, plural -ties, adjective<\/p>\n<p>1.  an essential or distinctive characteristic, property, or attribute<br \/>2.  character with respect to fineness, or grade of excellence<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Thanks, Mr. Webster.  You have defined a word that characterizes some people who I admire:  for their quality.  They say that if you surround yourself with people of <i>quality<\/i>, then you can&#8217;t help but be improved in many ways.<\/p>\n<p>I am exceptionally fortunate to have many quality men in my life, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My partner &#8212; a fine, upstanding, thoughtful and honest man who carries himself as an ongoing demonstration of what a quality man should be.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>My brothers &#8212; all are of superb quality in their respective lives, relationships with their families, and with me.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>My &#8220;eighth brother&#8221; who also goes by &#8220;AZ&#8221; &#8212; you know from just watching him that he is quality personified.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>My boot twin, Clay &#8212; who has many qualities of caring, thoughtfulness, and upstanding character that one can&#8217;t help but admire.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Friends I grew up with &#8212; I maintained friendships for more than 45 years with some of these guys.  Why?  They add quality to my life, because they are quality guys.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Friends who I have more recently met &#8212; these quality guys have reached out to me via email.  They have an astute sense of what composes quality, I guess, as they sent me a message and we began having conversations.  I have much to learn from them, as their intelligence is one indicator of their quality.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Mentors and civic leaders &#8212; many have helped me over the years to learn and be better at what I do, both at work and in my civic life.  A sign of quality is for someone to spend time with someone else who wants to learn.  I have benefited greatly from those who share so much.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>While my father is no longer among the living, I can&#8217;t make a statement about quality men without listing him as well.  His qualities were numerous, and many people, including me, benefited tremendously from sharing time with him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are men of all shapes, sizes, colors, and so on.  It is fairly easy to know if you&#8217;re communicating with a quality man.  I am so richly blessed to build relationships with quality men who influence me to be the man I am.  Thanks, guys!<\/p>\n<p>Life is short:  surround yourself with quality, and you can&#8217;t help but be a better man.<br \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Qual-i-ty: [kwol-i-tee] noun, plural -ties, adjective 1. an essential or distinctive characteristic, property, or attribute2. character with respect to fineness, or grade of excellence Thanks, Mr. Webster. You have defined a word that characterizes some people who I admire: for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=356\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,23,27,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-friends","category-joy","category-masculinity","category-partners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}