Archive for April, 2008

“Fun Dads”, “Strict Moms”, the myth of male weakness and female anorexia: some further thoughts on Courtney Martin’s book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 23, 2008
in Books, Eating disorders, Father and Youth
. 11 Comments

When I was in grad school, I started doing quite a bit of reading about eating disorders. Some of that interest was personal, as I developed (relatively late) a rather serious obsession with food and exercise in college. Some of it was intellectual, as it intersected nicely with my interest in women’s studies. At one point, back in 1992-93, I got involved in an outpatient treatment program for folks with disordered eating at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. It was a mixed-sex group, and I was one of only two guys in a group of about fifteen students who met weekly with a clinician.

I remember that no topic came up as often as did parents. And the clinician, at least, generally asked questions about mothers. Indeed, I heard her once say something like “The first question I ask most women who have eating disorders is: ‘what is your relationship like with your mother’?” Most of the research done on anorexics and bulimics has been done on women; indeed, it’s only been relatively recently that we see a formal acknowledgement that eating disorders are becoming more prevalent among men. And for over a century, the assumption of therapists and doctors has been that a young woman’s disordered eating is almost always tied up in the invariably complex and entangled relationship she has with her mother. As Joan Brumberg illustrates in her essential monograph, Fasting Girls: A History of Anorexia Nervosa, as early as the 1870s doctors suggested that food refusal in middle-class girls was a form of quiet rebellion against the strictures and limitations for women modelled by their mothers.

There’s a lot to be said for that analysis, but it often has the unfortunate tendency to let dads off the hook. In her wonderful Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Courtney Martin offers a chapter called “The Male Mirror: Her Father’s Eyes”. Some of what she says is new, some of it has been said before, but her analysis of the role of the father-daughter relationship and its role in the development of eating disorders is very good, and it offers a special challenge to those of us eager to help adult men transform the ways in which they relate to young people, particularly their own teenage children. Continue reading ‘“Fun Dads”, “Strict Moms”, the myth of male weakness and female anorexia: some further thoughts on Courtney Martin’s book’

More on the “Godmen” and the heresy of the hyper-masculine Christ

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 23, 2008
in Christianity and Men and Masculinity
. 2 Comments

In October 2006, I wrote a post about the “Godmen” phenomenon. That post begins:

Godmen is, according to the organizers, “a series of testosterone-fueled Christian men’s gatherings across the country. Their purpose: to reassert masculinity within a church structure that they (the organizers) say has been weakened by feminization.”

Uh huh. Or, in other words, Godmen is about giving men who feel overwhelmed and challenged by a Gospel message of egalitarian justice a chance to worship God without having to let go of the very things that Jesus asks them to surrender.

Now, happily, Christianity Today has a very critical piece up about the Godmen and other similar groups anxious to “reclaim Christ” as a hyper-masculine role model. (Cap tap to reader David, who sent me the link.) Brandon O’Brian, writing in CT, makes good sense here:

The masculinity movement would have us emulate the glorified Jesus—the one who will return on horseback and brandish the sword of judgment. That is certainly the Jesus we worship. But it is not the Jesus we are commanded to imitate. The only times Jesus appears in Scripture as a warrior are in his pre-incarnate debuts in the Old Testament and post-resurrection glory. Our model of behavior, then, is the suffering Son, not the glorified one.

That’s good. And further signs that Christianity Today, the flagship journal of American evangelicalism, is open to genuinely egalitarian principles:

Arguing for common characteristics between men and women is not to argue for identical roles. I don’t intend to downplay the significant differences between the genders or the distinct challenges in discipleship that men and women each face. I mean that if courage is Christlike, then men and women should both develop courage…

…we should mistrust any interpretation of Scripture that simply confirms our instincts. If it is more natural for a man to be aggressive and a woman to be passive, then a genuine encounter with Christ should challenge a man to become gentle (Gal. 5:23) and a woman to become bold (2 Tim. 1:7). The challenge of discipleship is extended equally to both men and women.

A-flippin-men. Bold emphasis is mine. And while I’m not sure how “natural” masculine aggression and feminine passivity really is, the reminder that a relationship with Christ challenges each of us to become fully and completely human is most welcome.

Where to give the “stimulus” check?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 22, 2008
in Money
. 21 Comments

I haven’t been able to figure out whether my wife and I qualify for one of the economic stimulus checks coming from the federal government next month, but if we do get one in the mail, I’m going to be quite cross. It’s not that I don’t like getting checks in the mail, but I’d infinitely prefer that the government use the money to protect natural resources or pay for increased Medicare benefits rather than sending us something we don’t really need.

At Feministe, there’s a good thread about where those of us fortunate enough not to need this ridiculous-hand-out-to-the-already-lightly-taxed ought to donate the largesse. Excellent suggestions to be found. If we get the check, 100% of whatever we receive will go to charity.

My concerns tend to revolve around animal rights issues, environmental preservation, and women’s rights. Three charities to consider in each category:

Animals:

Farm Sanctuary
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Matilde’s Mission — now supporting chinchilla rescue abroad!

Environment:

Nature Conservancy
Sierra Club
Big Sur Land Trust

Gender Justice:

EMERJ
Global Fund for Women
Women’s Sports Foundation

And your local food bank would probably really appreciate the giving, too.

Check out the Feministe thread for more. And for Pete’s sake, tax me more, not less.

“Affirm and redirect”: how “Smart People” gets older men, younger women exactly right

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 22, 2008
in Movies and Older Men & Younger Women
. 1 Comment

The first post I ever wrote on “older men, younger women” was inspired by a movie, Love Song For Bobby Long. The most hits I’ve had on any post so far in 2008 was also movie-inspired: Age is Never Just a Number.

Right before we left on Spring Break, my wife and I went to see Smart People. It was a bit of a disappointment, largely because the two leads (Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker) seemed miscast in their roles as a college professor and physician. The two supporting cast members, Juno’s Ellen Page and the sublime Thomas Haden Church, did their best to redeem the film. Church plays “Chuck”, a middle-aged ne’er-do-well who moves in with a widower prof (Quaid) and his overachieving daughter, Vanessa (Page).

Ellen Page is as pitch-perfect as ever as Vanessa, a socially awkward over-achieving young Republican who mothers her father and studies frantically for the SAT. Her monumentally self-absorbed father largely ignores her evident unhappiness — but uncle Chuck doesn’t. Chuck is troubled by his niece’s robotic, joyless behavior, and he starts a concerted campaign to get Vanessa to have fun. He gets her stoned one night, and then another night takes her to a bar. As they leave the bar, a tipsy Vanessa grabs her uncle and kisses him passionately. Chuck pushes her away immediately, horrified that she has misunderstood his interest in her. Much of the rest of the film (and indeed, the best scenes in this mediocre picture are all between Page and Church) is concerned with the way in which Vanessa and Chuck work through their awkwardness engendered by that kiss, and the way in which Vanessa comes to understand what it was and is she means to her uncle. Continue reading ‘“Affirm and redirect”: how “Smart People” gets older men, younger women exactly right’

Women’s history syllabus update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 21, 2008
in Books and Feminist Pedagogy
. 12 Comments

I’ve made some changes to my Fall 2008 women’s history syllabus, dumping the textbook and going entirely with trade paperbacks. Six books total, but with a cost savings to my students of some $30 over this semester, and no increase in the overall number of pages assigned. I’ve taken seriously the charge to be more inclusive in the way in which I teach the intersectionality of race and class with gender history; it’s my hope that this reading list reflects the next step on that road. Implementing these books — particularly Andrea Smith’s Conquest — will be a considerable pedagogical challenge for me, but a necessary one.

First Generations: Women in Colonial America , Carol Berkin (1997)
The Body Project, Joan Brumberg (1997)
A History of U.S. Feminisms, Rory Dicker (2008)
Full Frontal Feminism, Jessica Valenti (2007)
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Andrea Smith (2005)
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)

Three of the six books come from small, independent presses like Southend and Seal. I’m delighted to direct my money — and that of my students — towards publishing houses run by and for feminists.

This updating of the syllabus has been overdue, and I’m excited to see what comes of it. I teach four sections of women’s history a year, with a total of over 200 students; I will share their feedback as it becomes available.

FUSS, bikinis, and board shorts: Passover teen ministry by the pool

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 21, 2008
in Body, Eating disorders and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

It’s 5:48AM Pacific Time, and I’ve been up for nearly three hours. I’m in Miami International (the appropriately acronymed MIA), which may be the worst major airport in America. I’ll be home, Lord willin’, in time for my night class. It will be a very long day.

We spent this past weekend at a Passover gathering with the Kabbalah Centre International here in Florida. I’m happy to report that the number of practicing Christians participating in Kabbalah Centre events continues to grow each year; I had many conversations over the past few days about the ways in which faith in Christ and the study of this ancient practice intersect. (An old post about the compatibility of Christianity and Kabbalah is here.)

I’ve been working with the teens in the Kabbalah Centre, continuing a role I’ve been honored to play in several different churches. And Saturday afternoon, before the first Seder began, we gathered about a dozen of them by the pool on a warm Florida afternoon for some conversation. The story of the Passover is multi-layered; it is a historic remembrance of the Hebrew people’s escape from slavery in Egypt — and much more. During this afternoon chat, we talked about our own “personal Egypts” and what we each longed to overcome. Passover is a reminder of the possiblity for both collective redemption and individual transformation. Focusing in on the latter, we asked each of the teens to share a little bit about what they wanted to “pass over and out of” this year.

It was a normal enough session, save for the fact that we were all in bathing suits. I remembered the last time I led a youth group discussion in a beach setting, several years ago. The discomfort and awkwardness was palpable then, and it was present on Saturday as well. So I gently steered the conversation right to that difficult place. Continue reading ‘FUSS, bikinis, and board shorts: Passover teen ministry by the pool’

Home late Monday, and links

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 18, 2008
in Links
. 3 Comments

My flight home from Florida just got changed from Sunday night to Monday morning. (So much for having “status” on American Airlines.) I know that some of my students read my blog, so if you’re enrolled in my Monday day classes, those classes are, I regret, cancelled. My Monday night class will meet as scheduled; I’m due into LAX now at 1:40PM and that ought to give me more than enough time to reach Pasadena by 6:00PM. I can’t promise a shower in between.

I’ll try to get back into regular blogging next week. For now, a smattering of links:

Chris Clarke’s new book, Walking with Zeke, is available. For fans of animals, good writing, or both, this is a must-have.

There’s a great discussion at Feministe about the perils and rewards of blogging about your personal life.

Daisy at Our Descent on the problem of “being a good man.”

Richard Mouw makes his usual good-sense on “seeker-sensitive” churches.

Brownfemipower on renouncing the feminist label.

Anxious Black Woman on keeping the feminist label.

A rape survivor looks for fellow survivors to help with a survey.

Lauren admits she loved Zamfir and his pipes when she was a child, and asks for readers’ embarrassing revelations about the poor aesthetic choices they made when they were small.

In a piece that may have more than a little bearing on the “attribution/appropriation” wars in the blogosphere lately, songwriter Darrell Brown tells of being an “emotional spy”:

We (songwriters) record everything we witness in some way or another, taking notes on scraps of paper or recording snippets of melody or other inspiration into our voice mail so when we are alone we can retrieve and use them later. Another friend, Mary McCann, a poet who lives in Seattle, summed this process up pretty well: “Keep livng and take really good notes.”

Yeah, that’s true for bloggin’ as well.

Buying my friend a filet: of veganism, Volvos, and the complexity of seeing every dollar as a vote

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 16, 2008
in Money and Veganism
. 25 Comments

Our Florida vacation continues apace. Tonight, we drove up to Fort Lauderdale to have dinner at Sublime, one of the most renowned purely vegan restaurants in the country. There’s nothing like being able to go somewhere new and know that every last thing on the menu is completely “safe”, with no dairy or eggs or honey or any other animal product. The food was exquisitely good.

Greater L.A. has far too few “high end” purely vegan restaurants. (Madeline’s Bistro is perhaps the one exception). San Francisco has the splendid Millenium, where I carbo-loaded for a marathon last summer. And next month, we’ll be checking out the renowned Candle 79 in New York. But we’ve had Sublime on the list for a while, and I am delighted we got to experience it tonight.

A friend of mine asked recently how I, as a vegan, felt paying for other’s meat. I do take friends and family to lunch from time to time, and we rarely get a chance to go somewhere vegan. I always order a strictly vegetarian meal, but many of those whom I care about don’t. Some of my friends and family will eat vegetarian out of respect for my values, but I never insist that they do so. Recently, my wife and I picked up the tab at a dinner where two of our companions ate filet with lobster — about as “un-vegan” a meal as you could get. We had invited these friends to dinner, and we had selected a restaurant with multiple options; as a result, we ended up spending our dollars for something we find morally repugnant. Continue reading ‘Buying my friend a filet: of veganism, Volvos, and the complexity of seeing every dollar as a vote’

Short Update from Miami

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 15, 2008
in Blogging and Traveling
. 3 Comments

My beloved and I are in an unseasonably cool South Beach this morning. My poor wife, who craves the heat and humidity that reminds her of Colombia, was forced to wear a wrap as we ate a late pasta dinner on Ocean last night. I had a short run this morning on the boardwalk, and am now negotiating the dicey wireless and excellent coffee at the Tides Hotel.

I can’t recall a week where I’ve had more comments go into moderation! Unlike at the big, communal blogs, I have no one else to do the moderating for me, so I apologize if your comment gets stuck in limbo for hours and hours. Though I’ve closed commenting on the main post about the citation/stealing women-of-color controversy, my follow-up post remains open, as long as it is not used merely to continue the thread from the first one. And of course, personal attacks on anyone even tangentially involved in this sprawling controversy will be deleted.

I’ll be returning to what I hope will be thoughtful blogging a week from today; until the 22nd, I’ll be moderating comment threads and checking in regularly. I do appreciate both the traffic and the ongoing discussion.

For now, though, we’re going to enjoy a much-needed break here in South Beach and the surrounding area. Greater Miami both seduces and appalls, I find. After four visits out here in as many years, I’ve decided it’s very much the “nice place to visit, but wouldn’t want to live” experience. I would go absolutely mad in a world so utterly and indefensibly flat.

But hey, South Florida has its benefits. I’m going up to Boca Raton this afternoon to take a buddy of mine to lunch. Though he and I are both in our forties, knowing where we’re going to eat, we’ll be guaranteed to be the two youngest patrons in the place by at least a quarter century. I felt “old” a few weeks ago at the WAM conference; I feel positively coltish here.

Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 13, 2008
in Books, Feminist Pedagogy, Race, Teaching and WAM 2008
. 55 Comments

I’m taking a break from packing for our spring break trip to offer a Sunday afternoon post. We’re off tomorrow to the place where ‘Canes roam, where Democratic delegates wait in limbo this spring, and where dear old Gianni Versace breathed his last. It’s a region I love visiting every year, but gosh, I’m always as happy to leave as I am to arrive. It doesn’t help that I love the sun and the sun doesn’t love me. (My friend Joe and I used to run shirtless together; Joe, an ER physician, always called me a “melanoma farm.”) And I’m eager for the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Later today or tonight, I’m going to close comments I have closed comments on this post regarding the Amanda Marcotte, feminists-of-color, plagiarism/appropriation/attribution fight that happened across our corner of the blogosphere this week. I don’t regret having taken the tack I did in the original post, but I do appreciate the many and disparate voices that weighed in here. The general rule that threads rarely stay productive after the 200th comment may not have applied, but better not to push it. Two other threads with good discussions of this issue were at Feministe and Amptoons. I remain convinced of two things: first, that Amanda did nothing to deserve the opprobrium directed her way; two, that the mainstream, predominantly white feminist blogosphere (of which I am most decidedly a part) has more to do in terms of both listening and crediting what we hear.

When we were gathered in Cambridge two weeks ago for the Women, Action, and Media conference, I chose not to go to the panel on women–of-color bloggers. I missed out on the chance to meet the likes of Blackamazon, Brownfemipower, and Sudy. And I’ll be honest: I weighed whether to go up until the last minute. I talked to a few people at WAM whom I trust, and who were familiar with the often bitter and bewildering exchanges I had with many of those same bloggers in last year’s long and exhausting Full Frontal Feminism fiasco. (Do a search in my archives or in the archives of half the feminist blogosphere — first in May, and then around Thanksgiving, things got heated.) These friends told me that while there was some potential for good, it might be best if I didn’t go to the Women of Color panel. That was my gut intuition as well. Perhaps I flatter myself unduly, but I wondered if, in the aftermath of all that had happened, my presence would be a noticeable irritant. It would be hard — given that I was just about the only man over forty at the entire conference, and the only one in a bright pink shirt — for me to be unobtrusive. So I didn’t go. Continue reading ‘Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together’

Trojan Traurigkeit

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 11, 2008
in Academia and Memories
. 16 Comments

So, we’ve been having a battle royale in the feminist blogosphere this week. If you read the blogs, you know about it. Heck, I’ve had over 100 190 comments on a post for the first time since last fall, before my readership dropped during my January hiatus.

But other things matter, like Russell Arben Fox’s outstanding post about “treating cultists right”. It’s about the Fundamentalist LDS church in Texas and the government’s raid thereupon; Russell is a first-rate Mormon intellectual, and his piece is most welcome.

I was very unhappy to read this in the Los Angeles Times this morning: USC Will Disband German Department. Apparently demand has fallen for German language and literature courses, and a university that aspires to be one of the premier research institutions in the country has decided to axe the program. Current majors will be allowed to finish their degrees, but questions remain about how doctoral students in other departments who need German as one of their languages will complete that requirement.

I minored in German as an undergraduate. Indeed, I am but two courses short of a bachelor’s degree in German, even though I never achieved complete fluency in the language that was my father’s native tongue. (I visit my German-speaking relatives every few years, but otherwise, I hardly ever speak it anymore). I took plenty of literature courses, particularly on 19th century novels and short plays. I developed a particular fascination with Heinrich von Kleist, and wrote — on my old manual typewriter — one of the best papers I ever produced in college about his masterful Die Marquise von O. And yeah, the fact that he killed himself and his girlfriend in a suicide pact made him especially compelling to me.

My background in German language enriched my work as a graduate student in church history immensely. So many of the secondary sources I read were in German only. Much of my dissertation was influenced by Friedrich Prinz’s wonderful Klerus und Krieg im früheren Mittelalter.

I think lots of folks should do minors in a language. Though I sometimes wish now, two decades later, that I had majored in women’s studies instead of history, I have never regretted minoring in German. It enhanced and enriched my undergraduate experience immensely, and even now, I sometimes surprise people by being able to drop a line or two from Schnitzler or Goethe in the original. I’ve forgotten so much of what I learned, as I never use it anymore in this new life — but honestly, I am a better man today for having known it once.

Modern universities began in German-speaking lands. For a university like USC, richly endowed and increasingly academically respectable, to drop such a vital program is appalling. It represents a rejection of one of the foundation stones of Western heritage, and I fervently hope that the decision is soon reversed.

I’ll be speaking with my Trojan wife, a proud ‘SC alumna, and ask her to enclose a little note with her next check. Vielleicht auf Deutsch.

Off on America’s latest spring break, and a Friday reprint

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 11, 2008
in Housework, Male feminists, Marriage and Men and Masculinity
. 15 Comments

It’s a crazy Friday, and I’m not sure how much time I will have to post over the next ten days. I’m off on Spring Break next week (Pasadena City College has America’s last spring break, I’m nearly certain), so posting will be intermittent (but not entirely absent) between now and April 22.

Here’s a reprint of a 2005 post: Relinquishing Control: Some Thoughts on Men, Women, and the Domestic Sphere.

The comments below this post continue to come in, and there’s an interesting exchange worth following up on.

Stacer wrote:  it can be very hard for women to relinquish control over what is traditionally her domain, especially if she was raised traditionally and/or has family members who pressure her in that regard.

I replied: Helping wives to relinquish that sort of control is a task that men, especially those who also come out of a conservative background, ought to consider embracing.

Caitriona asked in response: Uhm, just how do you propose that men "help" their wives relinquish control in these areas?

This is getting into some tricky stuff.  Let’s see if I can wade through it.

I’ve known a fair number of women who have been raised with the notion that the home is their domain.   The cooking, the cleaning, the childcare, and the general presentation of the household are things they see as entirely, or nearly entirely, within their bailiwick.  While many feminists have rightly asked their boyfriends and husbands to "step up" and take an active role in domestic tasks, many traditional women have not.  In some instances, they don’t ask because they don’t expect their male partners to be interested or willing to help.  But in other cases, these women have bought in to the notion that their very identity as wives and mothers is inextricably linked with how they "keep house."

Again, it’s difficult not to share too much from personal experience.  I’ve lived with quite a few women (some to whom I was married, some not).  They came from widely divergent social, economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.   In some of these relationships, my partner and I agreed to live in a kind of low-key slovenliness.  (I’m a bit of a slob, as anyone who has seen my office can tell you!)  In other cases, we agreed to keep the house or apartment up to a "higher standard", and we either shared the labor or (more recently) hired help to do it for us.

Continue reading ‘Off on America’s latest spring break, and a Friday reprint’

“If I were better, he would never leave”: on romantic illusions, writing screenplays, and myths of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 10, 2008
in Favorite Posts 2008 and Relationships
. 17 Comments

It’s a crazy midterm-y type of day, and I don’t have much time in which to post. Yesterday’s post about having “so much love to give” struck a nerve with some folks. Hilary writes in response:

I’ve been reminiscing about what I could have done better as a girlfriend in my previous relationship, what I would change if I could go back, etc. My list of changes includes more sex, more time/work/reciprocity invested, more communication, less arguments, less jealousy, more love. Shit, that’s a lot of changes. I’ve learned a lot about myself and I feel I’ve vastly matured as a feminist, an independent, single woman, and a girlfriend. But I’m a bit nervous about my feelings of seeking to be the perfect girlfriend. I guess what I’m afraid of is being left, being cheated on, being criticized, because I know what all of that feels like and if only I could be the perfect girlfriend, that wouldn’t happen…right? What also scares me is that I’m not wondering to myself what I’ll get out of the relationship. Rather, I’ve been wondering what I can give to the relationship.

Conventional relationship advice to someone in Hilary’s position would applaud her focus on what she will do differently in her next relationship. After all, it seems mature and commonsensical to focus on self-improvement, on learning from past mistakes, and so forth. I’ve said a time or nine that one of the chief purposes of relationship — particularly an intimate and enduring one –is to serve as a vehicle for our personal growth. Given that we all know the dangerous old axiom “‘Tis better to give than to receive”, Hilary — and those like her — have nothing to worry about, right?

The problem, of course, is that as Hilary herself recognizes, her desire to be the “perfect girlfriend” is rooted in a fantasy that her perfection will ensure she will never be disappointed, betrayed, or left. Many of us, men and women alike, imagine that if we could just do things a little bit better, we could control how everyone else reacts to us. As anyone who has struggled with people-pleasing knows, the great dream of every people-pleaser is to be able to orchestrate everyone else’s emotional responses. “If I say things in just the right way”, the people pleaser imagines, “my boyfriend (girlfriend, spouse, mother, etc.) will follow the script I’ve written for them.” Continue reading ‘“If I were better, he would never leave”: on romantic illusions, writing screenplays, and myths of male weakness’

Thursday Short Poem: Lux’s “The Milkman and His Son”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 10, 2008
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

Sometimes, one line or one image in an otherwise unremarkable poem grabs you and stays with you for a long time. It is so for me with Thomas Lux’s offering — the final lines resonate, and I wish, though I know I am not, that I was the sort of man of whom such things were said.

The Milkman and His Son

For a year he’d collect
the milk bottles—those cracked,
chipped, or with the label’s blue
scene of a farm

fading. In winter
they’d load the boxes on a sled
and drag them to the dump

which was lovely then: a white sheet
drawn up, like a joke, over
the face of a sleeper.
As they lob the bottles in

the son begs a trick
and the milkman obliges: tossing
one bottle in a high arc
he shatters it in mid-air

with another. One thousand
astonished splints of glass
falling . . . Again
and again, and damned
if that milkman,

that easy slinger
on the dump’s edge (as the drifted
junk tips its hats

of snow) damned if he didn’t
hit almost half! Not bad.
Along with gentleness,

and the sane bewilderment
of understanding nothing cruel,
it was a thing he did best.

Duckling rescue

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 9, 2008
in Video
. 2 Comments

If you’ve got a few minutes and need some animal drama with a happy ending, watch this story shot in Orange County today. It’s heart-rending but ends with a fine payoff for all.