Archive for January, 2007

“Obscene gerunds”, the Christian life, and being in the world

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 11, 2007
in Christianity, Faith, Memories, Sexuality and Youth ministry
. 5 Comments

Jendi Reiter, who actually does very well what the sound of her surname implies, has a great post up this week about her experiences as a Christian writing a novel about decidedly non-Christian characters living a “lifestyle” of, as she and the Times put it, “obscene gerunds.”

I’m working on a novel that is taking me to some pretty strange places. Places in my head, for now, but no less dangerous for all that. These people are doing things that I’ve generally been too sensible, uninterested or afraid to do…

My characters drink, swear, commit adultery, have one-night stands, choose rock ‘n roll over doing their homework, and otherwise follow what they think is their bliss because the gospel is not just for people like me who don’t find any of those things appealing (except swearing — I am from Manhattan). I see the beauty and joy that they are seeking, the genuineness of their quest for a life beyond rational self-interest, as well as the insufficiency of their answers…

Jendi and I are both adult converts, though our pre-conversion lives were clearly quite different. I have been called many things in my day, but “sensible” has rarely been one of them. I’ve done the obscene gerunds six ways to Sunday, collected the bagfuls of stories — complete with the photos, court proceedings and physical and psychic scars to prove it. As one of my exes put it to me, quoting (I think) Anne Tyler, “Hugo, you’ve spent years leading a ’slipping-down life’”. Like more than a few sinners through the ages, I slipped right to the point of death — and by grace was saved. It’s a familiar story.

Jendi is called to write; it’s part of the gift set our God gave to her. And I’m so damned grateful that she’s doing writing that is grounded in the Gospel but isn’t saccharine sweet, isn’t, as she says, a pastel-covered Thomas Kinkade world. Christianity has to work in the real world, wide open to the realities of how people live and breathe. It has to acknowledge that people don’t just make love all the time, sometimes the sinners (and the saints) fuck. Authentic Christian writing, authentic Christian praxis, can be grounded in the transcendent (how’s that for an unworkable image), but it’s also got to engage people where they’re at, in all their messy, embodied, pleasureable, painful, earthiness.

At All Saints, I work with my share of teens who are trying out the “obscene gerunds.” Some of our kids are, like Jendi, “sensible” (or perhaps just fearful); others are more eager to explore their options. Lots of them have pre-marital sex, many get high. And while I know that for some this behavior is self-destructive acting-out, I know too much to believe that that’s true for all of them. Not every girl who loses her virginity at 16 is “troubled and looking for attention.” Modern conservative Christians tend to see pre-marital sexual behavior as not only sinful, but also indicative of some fundamental pyschological dysfunction. We confuse sin with pathology too easily, trying to get the language of a secular discipline (psychology) to reinforce our traditional moral views. (One of my ex-wives has her doctorate from Fuller Seminary in psychology, where they make a magnificent and spirited attempt to integrate the social sciences with evangelical theology.)

With my All Saints kids, I know my primary job is to love them as Jesus loved them, and to gently, softly, point them towards Him. But I make it clear to them that it is possible to love Jesus with all of your heart, soul, and mind, and still say “fuck.” It may even be possible to love Jesus with all of your heart, soul, and mind and do more than merely say it! As I’ve written before elsewhere, I reject the idea that experience is the best teacher. But I also reject the notion, common in Christian circles, that messy experience has no redemptive value. After all, my ability to pastor my kids when they are struggling is in no small way linked to my own past. I can say “I’ve been there”, and have it be true. Such authenticity often matters to teenagers, though it doesn’t mean that someone without such experience is a poor youth pastor.

And I will confess that I do enjoy the stories that some of my friends who are still “out there” share with me! When I first got sober and turned my life over, I was forced to end a lot of friendships with people whose influence was less than positive. They were interested in continuing to do with me what I had been wont to do, and that behavior was killing me. For a long time, I didn’t dare go to bars or clubs. (Now, I’m too eager to get to bed early, but that’s another story.) I avoided R-rated movies for a while, and in the first blush of conversion and sobriety, became — typically — a bit of a prig. It was what I needed to do, as my confidence was so fragile and my vulnerability so great. Just being around alcohol, just being around a culture of promiscuity, terrified me. And I had to withdraw.

That’s not the case any longer. I’m okay being the only sober person in the room these days, though I do find that most drunks aren’t nearly as funny as they think they are. I can be in an atmosphere of electric sexual tension, quietly confident that my faith and my devotion to my wife will keep me safe. I don’t flirt with temptation merely to test my conversion, nor do I seek it out for an illicit thrill, but I don’t run from it either. I like some of the wild stories I hear from my teens and my friends who are still “out there” doin’ the obscene gerunds. Often I can say, “Been there, done that, have the scar and the t-shirt”, but other times I can say “Wow, even I never tried that!” I don’t deny that for all of the pain I endured and inflicted, I often had a great deal of pleasure and fun. And while I don’t dwell on the memories of the past, I’m not reluctant to contemplate what others are still out there doing.

I’m looking forward to Jendi’s book.

Thursday Short Poem: Rich’s “Power”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 11, 2007
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

This fine old Adrienne Rich poem is perhaps not her best, but it’s a favorite for the final lines. For all of us, whether our power comes from our beauty or our pocketbook or our pride, what exalts us has the power to bring us low. A common enough observation, but sometimes the role of poetry is to take common observations and give them to us in new and fresh ways.

Power

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and some thoughts on apostasy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 10, 2007
in Faith, Feminism, Politics and Relationships
. 5 Comments

I’ve been meaning to post about the death of renowned feminist (and later, anti-feminist) historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who died last week at the age of 65. Her obit in the Chronicle of Higher Ed is here.

It’s been a hard couple of years; so many renowned feminists have died in the past 24 months: Dworkin, Butler, Friedan; most, like Fox-Genovese, died far too young. Of course, the feminist blogosphere has devoted rather less attention to the passing of the last of these. We are always hardest on former allies who apostasize, after all, whether that apostasy leads them to the left or, as in Fox-Genovese’s case, over to the Catholic Right.

Like Frederica Mathews-Green, Fox-Genovese began her career as a secular feminist. Her work on slave and white women in the antebellum south was universally praised. Perhaps more importantly, she helped establish one of America’s very first doctoral programs in Women’s Studies at Emory University, where she remained as professor until her death.

In later years, however, she and her husband became serious, conservative Catholics. She became, like Christina Hoff Summers, a very public anti-feminist, rejecting her old positions and celebrating a radically different world view, grounded in her own sincere conversion.

Her passing was marked by the right; read this touching memorial from Robert George at National Review.

Apostasy is a funny thing, especially for those of us who make our living in the world of ideas, religion, or politics. The history of the academy is littered with examples of men and women who achieved a sterling reputation linked to one set of ideological principles which they later repudiated. Some move from left to right (think of the David Horowitzes of the world); others move from right to left (think of Barry Goldwater, or the “evolution” of certain Supreme Court justices.) This evolution or apostasy is usually accompanied by shrill cries of disappointment and betrayal by those who feel abandoned, and an effusive welcome from the former enemies whom one has now joined. Friendships are often severed in the process, though in Fox-Genovese’s case, that seems to have happily not been true.

All sides in an ideological battle like to welcome adult converts. Both left and right, feminists and anti-feminists, tend to flatter themselves with the notion that wisdom and maturity will invariably lead discerning folks to their particular position. It’s immensely satisfying to construct a narrative of personal growth that suggests that one could be one thing when one was young and coltish, but become something else once one “really understood how the world works.” Those who join our battle late in life, particularly when they have switched sides after a period of reflection, are often more celebrated than the “cradle believers.” Ideologues on left and right love the idea that someone has “tried out the other side” and “evolved” to seeing things our way.

Some of us demonize our ideological opponents, but most of us tend to think of them as well-intentioned and misinformed rather than genuinely malicious. “If only they really understood as we understand”, we say to ourselves, “they’d come round.” When on occasion they do, abandoning their old beliefs for new ones, we rejoice. In the same way, when a former ally leaves us for “the dark side” (be it traditional Catholicism or secular feminism), we lament their “fall”. We assume that they were “tempted”, or underwent some sort of psychic trauma from which they couldn’t recover. We tend to pathologize apostasy when it takes a colleague in the struggle away from us, because most of us can’t accept a legitimate intellectual or spiritual reason why a fellow soldier in the culture war would switch sides.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was an important American historian, and an important figure in the Women’s Studies movement. That in her later years she turned her back on many of her earlier positions is not evidence that those positions were flawed, immature or inadequate. But by the same token, her transformation into a Catholic traditionalist doesn’t vitiate the importance of her earlier work, and it doesn’t diminish the obligation of those of us who share the commitments she abandoned to thank her for her service and to celebrate her life.

A note about obesity report cards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 9, 2007
in Body and Youth
. 11 Comments

Much is being made of this New York Times story yesterday about “obesity report cards”.

The practice of reporting students’ body mass scores to parents originated a few years ago as just one tactic in a war on childhood obesity that would be fought with fresh, low-fat cafeteria offerings and expanded physical education. Now, inspired by impressive results in a few well-financed programs, states including Delaware, South Carolina and Tennessee have jumped on the B.M.I. bandwagon, turning the reports — in casual parlance, obesity report cards — into a new rite of childhood.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is a notoriously poor indicator of overall health, as many commentators have pointed out. And given the huge fluctutations that kids go through as they grow, it is a rare child indeed whose BMI (based on weight and height) will always be perfectly “average”. Like most people, I went through a very skinny stage before adolescence, and then a prolonged chubby one that carried me through high school. Had my BMI been measured when I was a string bean in fourth grade, it would have suggested I was too thin; by ninth grade, it might have suggested I was too heavy. And I am not at all sure that calling attention to it would have led to any changes in my eating habits.

As the Times article points out, it’s useless for schools to cut physical education programs, serve junk in the cafeterias, and shame students for their bodies all at once. Now, restoring P.E. and serving healthy food wouldn’t justify shaming either, but there would be a modicum of consistency in the message. I am a great advocate of P.E., particularly when classes are designed not merely for aspiring jocks but to get the less athletically inclined to enjoy moving their bodies. Simply offering competitive sports opportunities isn’t enough; schools must offer a much more inclusive and diverse range of physical activities that can meet a wide variety of interests. It’s worth spending the money on. (I’d enjoy teaching PE, frankly; it would be an exciting challenge to get a wide variety of kids excited about being active in a non-judgmental environment.)

It’s difficult to sell “health”, particularly to the young. Kids, particularly in their adolescent years, care desperately about looks. Thinness is, as we all know, very “in” for girls, and has been since the 1920s. Fit and toned muscles are “in” for boys. But outer beauty and inner health are not closely linked; one can achieve thinness with an unhealthy regimen of cigarettes and diet Coke and pills (I know this from my own experience). The absence of fat, in other words, is in no way, shape or form a reliable indicator of overall health. Indeed, we can’t gauge health by looking at a person’s outsides, and for the young, outsides are critically important. Tell a teenage girl who has just started smoking that she might get lung cancer, and see what reaction you get; she knows damn well it’s bad for her, but the consequences are both far off in the future and apparently invisible. What she cares about is not health but appearance, and she — and her peers of both sexes — are far more interested in the latter than the former.

I’m prepared to believe that childhood and adolescent obesity is a problem. But the enemy is not fat; the enemy is a lack of opportunity to exercise and a dearth of healthy food options. Health and fat are, in fact, not always mutually exclusive; sloth and health invariably are. There’s a huge difference between a concern with aesthetics and a concern with genuine well-being. Most kids are only concerned with the former, and “obesity report cards” seem designed only to reinforce this misplaced anxiety.

I’m a work-out junkie. I like the aesthetic results of all of this exercise and healthy eating. I am glad it may prolong my life. But my obsession with exercise is not particularly about becoming healthier or about being better looking; it’s about a physiological addiction to endorphins, to the rush and high I get from exertion. I like how I feel when I am fit — everything else is just a happy bonus.

Recommitting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 9, 2007
in Christianity and Faith
. 4 Comments

It strikes me this morning that it’s been a while, too long a while, since I’ve posted about faith. I don’t know why that is, but one of my New Year’s resolutions has been to work on reconnecting myself with some of the daily rituals of worship and prayer. For the last few months, I’ve felt myself slipping into a rather perfunctory relationship with my Christian identity; I’m writing a book proposal about the intersection of masculinity, faith, and sexuality, and that’s got me intellectualizing a great deal and connecting rather less. (Mind you, as the son of two academics, I wince when I use the awkward term “intellectualizing”.)

Our “Seekers” confirmation class at All Saints resumed this past Sunday, and that’s very helpful. The old adage in Alcoholics Anonymous is that you can’t give away what you don’t already have — and I certainly can’t lead young people to a deeper relationship with Christ if I’m not actively working on that same relationship myself. It’s the difference between “describing” and “modeling”, and years and years of doing this have taught me that the latter is far more effective.

Like many people, my faith life has always been strongest when I’ve felt overwhelmed by doubt and uncertainty. When I was getting sober for the last time in 1998, going through my last divorce in 2002, or facing my father’s death this past spring, I was diligent in my prayers and meditation, diligent in asking God daily for guidance. And these days, I’m too comfortable. My marriage is happy, I’m enjoying my teaching, the finances seem stable, my chinchillas are cheerful. And I have slipped into “nominal Christianity”, paying lip service to a faith that at other times has seemed so vital, so intense, so all-consuming.

I know from talking to more seasoned Christians (and serious followers of other paths), that for adult converts, it’s hard to recapture the intensity of the “hour one first believed.” As someone prone to addictive, chemical highs, I miss that sense of being “on fire for Christ”, completely and absolutely in love with Him. (Like a number of the faithful throughout the ages, I often had explicitly erotic dreams about Jesus in the first few years after my conversion; for better or worse, He hasn’t appeared in my dreams in a very, very long time. I miss that, and I am sure it’s because I’m not open to it.)

So, I’m recommitting this morning. I’m going to go through the psalms again, as that is an especially reliable source of consolation and inspiration. (And I won’t just read my basic standbys: 37, 91, 102, 139.) I’m going to set aside five minutes every morning for meditation. I could promise half an hour, but I know that my mercurial, ENFP nature can’t possibly sit still that long. 300 seconds is about my max, but I know from experience it can work wonders.

The major project I am working on in several areas of my life is the synthesis of contemporary feminist thought and praxis with traditional Christian theology. That desire to reconcile the seemingly contradictory informs my writing, my teaching, my volunteer work. But I haven’t been living it out, particularly on the faith side of the ledger, as well as I ought to be. Five months from forty (can you tell how momentous that birthday will be for me?), I need to remind myself why I fell in love with my Savior in the first place. I need to invite Him back into my dreams.

A Fifty Things meme

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 8, 2007
in Blogging and Vanity
. 1 Comment

This meme comes from Lynn. Because my grades are done, and because the workload is about to jump through the roof, I thought I’d indulge.

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? I look really tired and my goatee is a little bit uneven.

2. How much cash do you have on you? Nothing but plastic. Need to hit the ATM.

3. What’s a word that rhymes with “DOOR?” More?

4. Favorite planet? Venus, duh.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? One of the kids in my youth group.

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone? Vibrate, baby.

7. Do you “label” yourself? To excess, and often inaccurately.

8. What shirt are you wearing? A Brooks Brothers indigo button-down I bought in Pittsburgh years ago.

9. Name the brand of the shoes you’re currently wearing? Versace. Back when I still bought leather.

10. Bright or dark room? Bright.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you? A reliable and invaluable source of Quaker bloggitiness.

12. What does your watch look like? Not wearing one at the moment, but my favorite is my red Paul Frank.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night? Trying to overcome jet lag.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say? “Up for boxing tomorrow?” The reply was negative.

15. Where is your nearest 7-11? Corner of Lake and Orange Grove. I worship at 7-11s.

16. What’s a word that you say a lot? “Absolutely.” I loves me my adverbs.

17. Who told you he/she loved you last? My wife.

18. Last furry thing you touched? Racheli Scrappy Doo Schwyzer

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days? Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed? Haven’t had a film camera in years.

21. Favorite age you have been so far? I was handsomest at 29, I was fastest at 31, and I think I was at my smartest at 26 — but I’m happier now at 39 than ever before.

22. Your worst enemy? Haven’t had one for years.

23. What is your current desktop picture? A wedding photo.

24. What was the last thing you said to someone? “Have a good one”, to the clerk at Rite Aid.

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be? If I could really fly, getting the million would be fairly easy. I’ll pick the wings.

26. Do you like someone? ? Like, have a crush on someone? On my wife, of course. I have my longstanding boy-blog crush on Chris Clarke.

27. The last song you listened to? I’ve got Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna on. It’s what I need.

28. What time of day were you born? 1:20PM, PDT.

29. What’s your favorite number? Three

30. Where did you live in 1987? Ridge House, a co-op at Berkeley.

31. Are you jealous of anyone? That Canadian dude on Ratemyprofessors who is hotter than I am.

32. Is anyone jealous of you? The few folks I manage to pass on my runs.

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened? In bed for the first plane, in the shower for the second.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money? Vow to never use vending machines again, a vow broken monthly.

35. What’s your life motto? “Often in error, never in doubt.”

36. Are you touchy feely? Is the pope German? To a fault.

37. Name three things that you have on you at all times? wedding band, unsharpened pencil, glasses.

38. What’s your favorite town/city? In the States, my home town of Carmel by-the-Sea. Abroad: Dolgellau, Wales.

39. What was the last thing you paid for with cash? The departure fee at Bangkok airport, 500 Thai baht.

40. Can you change the oil on a car? I can drive right up to the service bay at the dealership with the best of them.

41. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her? Divorced and teaching psychology in New Mexico. All four women I’ve married, as well as at least half of my serious girlfriends, were psych majors. Figure.

42. How far back do you know about your ancestry? Depends on the side. On my mother’s mother’s father’s side, the Roedings, we go back to sixteenth-century Hamburg.

43. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy? My mom’s Christmas party: royal blue silk shirt, Banana Republic trousers, blue blazer.

44. Does anything hurt on your body right now? A very sore neck.

45. Have you been burned by love? Seared and grilled and broiled many a time.

Those were Lynn’s questions. To get to fifty, I made up five of my own.

46. What living person whom you’ve never met do you most admire? Folk singer Pete Seeger.

47. What character trait would you most like to rid yourself of this year? My anxiety.

48. What one human flaw would you eradicate if you could? The absence of genuine imagination.

49. Where was your first kiss? Fisherman’s Wharf, Monterey.

50. What actor/actress do you most resemble? I get Guy Pearse a lot, especially when I’m clean-shaven. I hope it’s for L.A. Confidential.

Some thoughts on men, women, drinking and responsibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 8, 2007
in Feminism, Relationships, Sexuality and Youth
. 37 Comments

The first major debate of 2007 in the feminist blogosphere has broken out over this article by Liz Funk in Women’s E-News: Underage Women Sidle up to Barroom Risks. (It also appeared here at Alternet.) It’s a rather awkward title for a rather unremarkable piece about the apparently common practice among New York bars of admitting underage women in order to attract paying male customers. Funk suggests that women who accept the offers to get in for free (or get in underage) face the risk of getting raped as a consequence.

An extraordinary number of feminist bloggers have responded with considerable ire. (I first read about Funk’s article at Feministe, and Jill has compiled a list of other feminist responses.) The chief complaint, of course, is that Funk is engaging in classic victim-blaming. That victim blaming is made especially clear in the header from the Alternet version:

Bars and clubs often pay young, pretty women to attract more business. For owners, that means a boost in image and revenue. For women, it means an increased risk of harassment, or even rape.

It’s a classic way of writing about sexual violence; the notion of male responsibility and culpability is entirely absent. In Liz Funk’s formula, intoxication equals vulnerability, and vulnerability increases the chances of getting raped; therefore, a woman who gets drunk is at least partially responsible for what happens to her. What’s entirely missing is a discourse of male accountability.

I haven’t had a drink in eight and a half years. In my twenties, however, I spent a fair amount of time in bars and clubs, and did my share of drinking. As someone in recovery today, I don’t enjoy being the only sober person in a social situation, so I tend to stay away from those environments these days. But I understand the seductive appeal of clubs very well. Darkness, loud music, sexual desire and booze can be an enticing combination.

But what troubled me even in my youth was the widespread notion among my peers that alcohol had a vital role to play in negotiating sexual consent. When I was in college, my male friends made it clear that they saw alcohol as having two primary functions: they drank it to increase their confidence, and they wanted women to drink it in the hopes that it would turn a “No” into a “Yes.” A few drinks, we all knew, could turn shy lads into boisterous extroverts; in the same way, as in the words of a recent country hit, “tequila makes her clothes come off.” Getting a woman drunk was the shortcut to a “green light” for sexual activity.

I loved alcohol because it did relieve me of my inhibitions. It did make me — at least in my own mind — smooth, charming, and attractive. It quieted, if only for a short while, my self-doubts and anxieties. My best memories of drinking are from my high school and college years, before my problem got more serious, before my behavior started landing me in ERs and locked wards. I can remember buying wine coolers (Bartles and Jaymes) and Lucky Vodka from the one store in Berkeley guaranteed to sell to underage students. (It’s gone now, folks, quite possibly for this very reason.) I have many happy, if mildly sordid, memories of frosh parties in the dorms. It’s difficult to imagine having had as good a time at eighteen without the help of alcohol.

One of the most important tasks of the men’s movement is anti-rape work. And one key problem in anti-rape work is designing programs that are realistic about alcohol consumption among young men and women. It’s hard enough, after all, teaching a group of high school and college-age men about negotiating consent and setting healthy sexual boundaries when sober; adding booze to the mix increases the challenge exponentially. Obviously, the key point that we need to make, over and over again, is that alcohol consumption doesn’t vitiate the responsibility to respect other human beings. Alcohol, while perhaps an intensely enjoyable part of the social world of the young, ought not be used as a tool to diminish the capacity of women (or men) to set and maintain boundaries.

The reality is that young people often use their own drinking in order to gain the courage to do what they are too scared to do sober, whether that’s asking someone for their number or going to bed with a casual acquaintance. Alcohol also provides a convenient excuse for “bad” behavior; just as small children claim “It doesn’t count, I had my fingers crossed”, their college aged brothers and sisters can say “Oh, I was drunk, it doesn’t count.” A healthy relationship with alcohol is one where booze ceases to be either a tool or an excuse — and it is asking a great deal from the young to expect them to drink without either of those in mind.

Alcohol plays a notoriously important role in sexual assault. Those of us who care about young people, however, need to be very clear that drinking does not excuse sexual violence. Drinking is obviously not an excuse for bad driving, otherwise we wouldn’t have penalties against operating a car under the influence. If a drunk driver killed a drunk pedestrian who was legally in a crosswalk, the blame would rightly fall solely on the driver. Our culture doesn’t blame folks for getting run over by drunk drivers; we blame the one operating the car and rightly so. As with driving, so with sexual consent. We can acknowledge that young people will drink, often to excess — but we can send a clear message that intoxication doesn’t vitiate accountability.

Personally, one of the hardest things about getting sober was learning how to handle social situations without the crutch of intoxicants. Forcing myself to take risks without relying on liquid courage was not an easy thing — but like most difficult things in life, it has proved to be well worth it. Every once in a while, before I have to do something challenging or difficult, I wish I could have a quick shot to bolster my confidence. But I’m not willing to pay that high a price.

Duplicating woes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 8, 2007
in Pasadena City College
. 6 Comments

I’m still jet-lagged, and woke up at 4:30AM. It’s a good thing I got up so early, as it meant I came to work in time to discover that the duplicating office had not produced my syllabi for the winter intersession, which starts today. So I type from the departmental office, sitting next to a huge copying machine which is taking forever to warm up, in the hopes that my syllabi will be done for my first class at 8:00AM.

I’ve got my usual three intersession classes, all full already. As always on the first day of school, my stomach is filled with the proverbial fluttering of butterfly wings. May it always be so.

Home again, with some photos

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 6, 2007
in Photos and Traveling
. 7 Comments

We’re home from a long and happy trip that took us to Hong Kong, Macau, and Thailand; our first trip to East Asia, and a very interesting one. I’ll have at least a few pictures up in my Flickr account in the next day or two.

I blogged last month about my love of flying. That love was put to the test these past couple of weeks. As loyal patrons of British Airways, we flew to Asia — the long way: Los Angeles-London-Hong Kong and return, or 2/3rds of the way around the earth. Our just concluded homeward journey began in Bangkok; we flew BKK-HKG-LHR-LAX, landing a couple of hours ago after 25 hours of flight time and another eight to ten hours of “lounge time.”

Now that we’re home, the first priority, of course, is time with the chinnies. Then, eventually, to the sea of emails that need answering. And then, starting Monday, some good blogging. I can’t wait to get back to reading my regular blogs — I feel utterly out of touch with everyone, and can only hope that my readership will return.

UPDATE: Public pictures are up here. Friends and family can view a second, private album; email me if you want to be added to that category.