{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Mark Connor \u2013 It\u2019s About Time","description":"In this episode of the Journey of My Mother\u2019s Son podcast, I talk with fellow author, Mark Connor. Mark Connor is a Boxing Trainer and a Writer from Saint Paul, Minnesota. His first book, It\u2019s About Time (Millions of Copies Sold for Dad), is a saga wrapped around a package of poems, guarded by angels. Through an autobiography reading like a novel, he weaves together a story of love, family, and life with twenty poems running through it, sharing his growth in the Catholic faith, the influence of Irish heritage in his hometown\u2019s American identity, his exploration of Lakota tradition within the urban American Indian community, and his understanding of how truth found in different spiritual approaches can lead others\u2014as it led himself back\u2014to its fullness in the revelation of Christ. Mark Connor grew up in Saint Paul, calling himself the product of a \u201cmixed marriage,\u201d because his father\u2014a combat wounded Vietnam veteran\u2014grew up across the street from St. Columba parish in the Midway district, while his mother\u2014a school teacher who later became a lawyer\u2014came from the Holy Rosary parish \u201cacross the border, in South Minneapolis.\u201d Born in Minneapolis and raised in Saint Paul, he began boxing at age 10, at the Mexican American Boxing Club on the city\u2019s East Side, the area of the city from which he formed his understanding of the world, anchoring his perception of direction to the family house and the rising of the sun outside his bedroom window.  He had 102 amateur fights, made it to three national tournaments, and competed against some of the nation\u2019s top world class boxers. He became the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves lightweight champion at 17 and traveled to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO, two days after graduating high school, competing in the 1987 trials for the Pan American Games. Raised in the East Side parish of St. Pascal Baylon, where he attended first through sixth grade, Mark\u2019s father, a graduate of [Bishop] Cretin High School in Saint Paul, insisted Mark and his brother, David (13 days less than one year older than Mark), each attend its rival, St. Thomas Academy, in suburban Mendota Heights, from 7th through 12th grade, an all-boys Catholic Military high school. Having begun writing seriously at 16 and starting college at 18, Mark began an internal struggle between the academic path and boxing, spending one and a half years, respectively, at three schools\u2014Regis University in Denver, Co., the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis\u2014earning his BA in English from the University of Minnesota. He was inactive as a boxer for only one and a half of those years, but never felt he was able to reach his potential while emersed in study, so upon graduation, he continued Boxing. Mark boxed competitively for two and half more years, then, deciding not to follow his gym mates\u2014two of whom became world champions\u2014in a professional boxing career, and believing it was already late in life to join the military, he went on an adventure, driving to Seattle, WA, securing a job on a salmon fishing boat headed to Southeast Alaska. A Year later, instead of returning to the commercial fisherman\u2019s life, he traveled with a friend to a Lakota Sundance ceremony on the Rosebud reservation, leading eventually to a job at A\u00edn Dah Yung (Our Home) Center, a Native American Indian temporary emergency homeless shelter for youth aged 5 to 17, in Saint Paul. Within this setting, continuing to write freelance articles and periodically working on fiction and poetry, he eventually began a personal training service and worked with both competitive and recreational boxers, as well professionals and amateurs, wrote about boxing, and contemplated his faith. While recognizing that truth, goodness, and beauty are indeed present in the faith traditions of the indigenous community of friends welcoming him, as both a guest and a relative, he eventually reembraced the beauty, goodness, and truth of his Catholic faith and has since attempted to responsibly discern God\u2019s will for him, according to his legitimate talents and desires. Within that sincere effort, at the end of September, 2019, his father, who\u2019d been patiently guiding him, died from a heat attack, just before America\u2014and the world\u2014appeared to enter a new era of chaos within which we are attempting to stabilize ourselves. Mark wrote the first lines of his book, It\u2019s About Time (Millions of Copies Sold for Dad) the day his father died, Monday, September 30, 2019. However, over the next year, as his country went through the impeachment and acquittal of a president, endured the trauma of an economic shutdown over a mysterious virus coming from a lab leak in China, and his beloved Twin Cities blew up in fiery riots, Mark worked when he could (the Boxing gyms and churches were closed due to Governor\u2019s orders), helped his mother who was diagnosed with a fatal heart disease, and daily mourned his father. He helped protect American Indian buildings with American Indian Movement (AIM) Patrol, and he eventually got part-time work as a bouncer, working bar security when restaurants were allowed to reopen. But he didn\u2019t do much until, as Christmas 2020 approached, he resolved that in the coming year he would do something with which his father would be happy. Organizing himself and setting his goal, he began writing the book his father\u2014who\u2019d nagged Mark about always insisting he was a writer yet never publishing a book\u2014was never to see published in his earthly lifetime. Beginning the daily process of writing on February 9, 2021, Mark completed the first draft of It\u2019s About Time (Millions of Copies Sold for Dad) just before Easter on the Monday of Holy Week, March 29, 2021. In this book he tells the tale of his search for a meaningful life, appreciating the gift of God\u2019s love that life actually is, and how he sees now that the guardian angels were always guiding him and his family through it all. A contract with a humble little local publisher was severed over editorial differences on Christmas Eve, 2022, so Mark relied on his father\u2019s gift, his high school education, accepting help from his St. Thomas Academy contacts, specifically his literary advisor, Dan Flynn (Author of Famous Minnesotans: Past and Present) and legal advisor Kelly Rowe, and Mark\u2019s classmate, Tony Zirnhelt, and the book won the 2024 Irish Network Minnesota Bloomsday Literary Award and was published, through Connemara Patch Press, on Father\u2019s Day, June 16. Unfortunately, Mark\u2019s mother, who\u2019d read the manuscript, never saw it in print, having collapsed in his arms and died October 22, 2023. Yet Mark continues on in hopeful and confident prayer that she\u2014Mrs. Nanette Jane Connor\u2014is watching over him, as she promised she would, next to his father\u2014Robert J. Connor\u2014while gazing perpetually into the Beatific Vision of the face of God. To find out more about Mark, you can check out his website at https:\/\/boxersandwritersmagazine.com\/. ","author_name":"The Journey of My Mother's Son","author_url":"https:\/\/journeyofmymothersson.com\/","html":"