Archive for the 'Family' Category

Men, mortality, stewardship, love

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 2, 2008
in Age, Body, Family, Father, Favorite Posts 2008, Men and Masculinity and Veganism
. 9 Comments

It’s not a conducive time for posting ’round these parts. We leave for the Philippines on Saturday night; we’ll be back on Friday, January 11. I have lectures to prep and packing to do.

My father-in-law died early Sunday morning, and we have been busy with taking care of family and with funeral arrangements. Sunday afternoon, my wife and I spent several hours dealing with the cemetary, the mortuary, and all the minutiae that come with death. I’ve gotten too familiar lately with all the details that survivors cope with in the aftermath of a loved one’s passing.

My Dad died eighteen months ago, at 71. My father-in-law died three days ago at 63. Over and over again, the words “much too young” echo in my head. My father’s father died at only 44 (in a car accident); my mother’s father died at 62. Both of my wife’s grandfathers died relatively young as well. Though the causes were all different, we both come from families where there are plenty of older women — and too few older men. The statisticians tell me that men in America and Europe should live to see at least 72, but for my wife and for me, neither our fathers nor any one of our four grandfathers made it to that age. Meanwhile, all four of our grandmothers made it to at least 80, and most well beyond.

So in addition to the grief over losing a loved one, I’m feeling this week an acute sense of fragility. Some of that is just the reminder — of the sort we always get when we’re confronted with death — of our own mortality. But in my personal experience (and the experience of my family), dying “too young” is a largely male phenomenon. Though some of these deaths were due to poor lifestyle choices, the emotional impression I am left with is that men are somehow more vulnerable than women. Continue reading ‘Men, mortality, stewardship, love’

Charles Thomas Chumrau Jr., 1944-2007

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 30, 2007
in Family
. 29 Comments

My father-in law, Charles “Chuck” Chumrau, died at 2:00AM today at Sherman Oaks Hospital following a brief illness.

Chuck was a kind, funny, warm-hearted man, and his passing is mourned by his three surviving children, his stepchildren, and his large extended family. He and I spoke last on Christmas day; we argued politics good-naturedly. Two days later, he suffered the heart attack that would eventually take his life. My wife, her brother, and her sister were all at his bedside at the end.

My wife and I have each lost our fathers in the space of eighteen months. Both dear men died much too young, but they died in the certainty that they were deeply loved. That is a comfort in this difficult time. We’ll be busy with funeral arrangements the next few days, so posting will not resume until later in the week.

My father-in-law…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 29, 2007
in Family
. 2 Comments

… is in hospital, in very grave condition. His name is Charles, and your prayers and good thoughts for him — and for my wife’s family — are very much appreciated.

A very long post on how to rebuild trust

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 28, 2007
in Addiction and mental illness, Family, Memories and Relationships
. 17 Comments

I insisted on inflicting my Top Ten posts of 2007 on my readers. Not everyone is so unkind; many bloggers have managed to provide only their single best post of the year for public consideration. Jon Swift has compiled an excellent list, having invited his entire blogroll to send him a link to what each writer considered his or her finest offering from these past twelve months. Warning: it’s a time-suck, as the kids say these days.

A regular reader asks:

I do have a question for you that you may be able to answer. I am wondering if it is possible to reconcile with a person where trust has been broken and be able to rebuild the trust back again. Have you any personal experience in this area that you can shed wisdom on?

I’m not a relationship expert: three divorces by age 35 are proof of that. That doesn’t stop me from offering advice and reflections, and it doesn’t stop people from asking. So with the standard caveat that my opinion is only that, an opinion, here goes.

I’m going to assume my reader is writing about reconciling with a romantic partner. When trust is shattered in a sexual relationship, it’s usually qualitatively different than it is in other friendships or among family members. But I’d like to touch on the loss — and the restoration — of trust in a variety of relationships, because I’ve got a considerable amount of hard-earned experience in this area.

I had my first major mental breakdown in April 1987, shortly before I turned 20. I had my last (God willing) in the summer of 1998, shortly after turning 31. Over that eleven-year period, I was hospitalized more than half a dozen times. I also struggled very publicly with a host of addictions. And I know full well that addicts break the hearts of those who love them, over and over again. My mother, father, brother, and sisters suffered more than anyone. None of my friends, lovers, or wives were part of my life for that entire period; I very successfully chased everyone who wasn’t bound to me by blood out of my life.

My lies were the standard ones: “I’m sober”, I would say — when I wasn’t. “I’m seeing a great therapist” — when I cancelled all my appointments. “The meds are helping” — when they weren’t. Above all, my most consistent lie was “I’m fine.” Anglo-Saxon reticence, and the concomitant dissembling it requires, were part of my family culture. I spent many years on the stage as a child, and my acting skills came in handy when it came time to cover up the pain, the despair, and the appalling acting-out behavior that characterized my life in my late teens and twenties. Continue reading ‘A very long post on how to rebuild trust’

A call for “Little House on the Prairie” fans

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2007
in Family and Mass media
. 10 Comments

I spent much of the Thanksgiving holiday with my cousin, Dean Butler. Dean is my mother’s sister’s eldest son, and for much of my childhood, he was my great hero. In the 1970s, whenever Dean (eleven years my senior) and I were at our family Ranch together, I followed him. My childhood enthusiasm for swimming and riding horses came largely from the fact that these were things that Dean did.

Dean’s an actor turned documentarian. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, he played Almanzo Wilder on the enormously successful “Little House on the Prairie” television series. LHOTP episodes have, for some time, been available on DVD — and a new generation is discovering this remarkable program. “Little House” was one of my favorite shows as a child and as a teen even before cousin Dean joined the cast, and I still find the old episodes surprisingly watchable and engaging.

Dean has a blog, and he’s interested — perhaps for a future project — in soliciting stories from people who watched and enjoyed “Little House” in its heyday. The show was unlike any on television, and had a near-cult following. If you watched the show then (or have discovered it more recently), Dean would love to hear your story. Visit his blog, and leave a comment about where you were in your life when the show was on, and how the program may have impacted you. Though “fan mail” is always nice, my cousin’s real hope is to gather stories about how LHOTP affected the people who watched it. During the years that the show aired (approximately 1974-1983), America was in a period of significant social, cultural, and political change. Those of us on the high side of forty can remember the era well, how we felt, what we thought. If LHOTP connected to your life, please visit Dean’s blog and drop him a line. And if you have friends or family who loved the show, please let them know about this project.

Here’s a pic of me with Dean taken last Friday atop Mission Peak, just above our ranch. Dean (a graduate of the University of the Pacific) is wearing Cal kit; I (a Cal alum) am wearing UVA gear. Buddy, our ranch lab, is in the background.

Thanks

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 20, 2007
in Blogging, Family and Holidays
. 9 Comments

Starting this afternoon, I’ll be away for the Thanksgiving holiday. No posting until Monday, November 26.

I did want to give thanks this morning to all the readers of this blog. If my statistics can be trusted, I’ve got a fairly stable readership. I’ve been averaging just under 1000 unique hits a day, and from what I can tell, a little less than half that number (300-400) are regular visitors. That’s nothing compared to the bigger blogs, of course, but given the length of my posts, I’m very grateful.

I’ve been blogging since August 2003. It’s been a joy and a revelation, and has become so much a part of my life that I would sorely miss it were I forced to give it up. I have no intentions of quitting, even as I sometimes struggle to come up with topics to write about. I’m grateful for the outlet this forum has given me for my thoughts and ideas. My friends and family are also grateful, I think — the fact that I blog means that I release some of my pent-up energy that might otherwise be expended all over them. Even now, periodically, my wife will say to me firmly: “My love, why don’t you go blog about that now?” (Telling me to blog is her kind way of getting me to stop bouncing around the house like a whippet on crack.) Continue reading ‘Thanks’

Muffie Valentine Albert, 1917-2007

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 5, 2007
in Family
. 3 Comments

My cousin, Muffie Valentine Albert, died last Tuesday at age 89. (Obit is here.) She was a dear and loving presence all of my life (even if she was part of that small minority within the clan who went to Stanford rather than Cal.)

She was the last of her age cohort; with her passing, my mother’s generation is now the most senior in our large and extended family. There is no one left who belongs to the generation of my grandparents. She was the last member of my family who remembered her grandfather, who came to California as a boy after the Gold Rush. With Muffie gone, no one is left who knew that generation of pioneers — those who came around the Horn or in covered wagons, who remembered the Civil War well.

We’ll have much to say about Muffie — and about the great majority she’s gone to join — when we gather as a family this Thanksgiving at the Ranch her grandfather (my great-great grandfather) built a very long time ago.

Cousin Dean blogs!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 1, 2007
in Family
. 2 Comments

My dear cousin Dean Butler is an actor and documentary film maker. His company website is here, his new blog is here.

Don’t hold our family relationship against him.

Dean gets some amazing stuff on film, and someday, somehow, we’re doing a project together.

More on staying home, parenthood, responsibility and trust

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 28, 2007
in Family, Feminism, Having children, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 18 Comments

Lots of discussion below my reprint of this old post.

My point in the original was not to elevate “stay-at-home motherhood” above other choices a young woman might want to make. Of course, when college-age women express a desire to “stay home with (their) kids”, those of us who are feminists are right to dig a bit deeper to discover the roots of that longing. As we’ve all pointed out eighteen times before, choices are always exercised inside of a cultural construct that teaches us that some choices are better than others. (This is why, for example, lots of women get their noses made smaller and very few get them made bigger — cosmetic surgery is in some sense a choice, but it is a choice heavily influenced by a lot of cruel and often racist aesthetic standards.) And when a young woman who has grown up hearing “mothers who work outside the home when their kids are small are selfish” says “I don’t want to be one of those selfish working women”, feminists are right to start up a discussion lickety-split!

But of course, it infantilizes women to say that the gal who longs to be a wife and a mother rather than an independent businesswoman is victimized by a patriarchal understanding of gender roles. There are choices that are made in order to please others, and there are choices we make out of our own deep desires (perhaps so deep that they are below the level that is influenced by culture). And while social conservatives often elevate the “stay-at-home wife” above all other roles for women (think of Dr. Laura’s tiresome “I am my kids’ mom”), progressives are sometimes unwilling to accept the desire to stay at home and be the primary caregiver as a legitimate want. (Think of the huge proliferation of guilt-inducing books about working and motherhood that have appeared just within the past two years!)

And of course, a significant component of the feminist project lies in liberating men to have far better relationships with their children than they may have had in earlier eras. The “separate spheres” ideology of the nineteenth century (it isn’t older, contrary to popular opinion) placed child-rearing solely in women’s hands, and earning solely in men’s. And while of course many women worked for money (in and out of the home) while raising their own children, historically far fewer working men took on an equal share of childcare.

If I’ve given the impression that I encourage stay-at-home motherhood while not also encouraging men to consider taking on the role of primary caregiver, I’m sorry. A key aspect of pro-feminist men’s work is encouraging young men to rethink the role of “father”. Many guys I work with do (when they feel they’re in a safe space) admit that they’ve fantasized about “staying home with the kids” while their partners worked outside the home. Of course, some of these lads haven’t the foggiest idea how much backbreaking work is involved in child-rearing. But some — often those who grew up in single-parent households — have a very clear idea of how much work and care is involved, and they still believe that they’re up to the task. It’s important for feminists to encourage men to develop and explore this often-atrophied capacity to nurture. And it’s important that we work to dispel the stigma society still attaches to a man who longs to be a “house husband.”

In a two-parent household — something that remains for many the ideal — women’s freedom to “stay home” is, of course, contingent on male reliability. While there are far fewer two-parent households where wives work outside the home while the men provide childcare, the reverse is true in those instances. It’s not a stretch to say that “staying home” without a steady independent income places one in a vulnerable position. Traditionally, it’s been women who’ve been in that vulnerable place — and that lack of autonomy has often meant women were not able to escape abusive or philandering husbands. Equal access to financial resources is a defense against being trapped. Anecdotally, I’d say one whopping reason why so many of my students don’t want to “stay home” is because of that justifiable fear of being unable to leave a disastrous marriage.

Does this mean that I’m returning to the tired old line that “all feminism is rooted in a disappointment in men”? No. Even if every man were willing and eager to be a devoted and faithful husband and father (and even if our economy permitted a working-class father to support an entire family on his salary), I don’t believe that the majority of women would gleefully abandon all of their public ambitions for the bliss of diapers and casseroles. Women’s desire for a public role is not a singular response to a frustration with unreliable men. But there’s no question that fears about male reliability play a part in some women’s decision-making about when and whether to marry, or whether to have children without a male partner with whom to raise them. Feminists thus do well to focus both on women’s liberation and male transformation.

My wife and I are both committed to raising our future children together. We both have flexible schedules, nearby relatives, and the resources to have some help. How the division of labor will break down when a child arrives remains to be seen, but I have every intention of being a competent and enthusiastic care-giver, wiper of vomit, changer of diapers. And how fatherhood and its responsibilities impacts my views will surely be a subject of a future blog post!

Note: This post is open for commenting only for those who are feminist-friendly.

A note on being at home in Carmel

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 21, 2007
in Family and Traveling
. 6 Comments

I’m back in the office, busy working up my fall syllabi. (And for those of you who have seen my office, it’s just been cleaned, top to bottom. You won’t recognize it.)

My wife and I spent the weekend visiting my mom in what I consider to be my hometown, Carmel by-the-Sea. I was born in Santa Barbara, but following my parents’ divorce, my mother, brother and I moved to Carmel. It was 1973, and I had just turned six. A lot happens to a person between the ages of six and eighteen (the age at which I graduated from Carmel High) and so it’s that community that I call my home.

Carmel, in my childhood, was much more socio-economically diverse than it is now. It began its life as an artists’ community, and in my childhood, was filled with more “mom n’ pop” grocery stores and gas stations than art galleries. There were certainly plenty of wealthy people around, but there was also a notable “bohemian element”, a fine group of “hippies”, and more than a few people in the middle class. Growing up, I wore Tuffskin jeans and my mother drove (for years) a ‘75 Ford Pinto. There were more Fords on the streets than Cadillacs or BMWs, and the streets were filled with children who actually lived in this fog-shrouded, woodsy paradise.

This weekend, with a car show in nearby Pebble Beach, I counted more than a dozen Bentleys. I saw no Ford Pintos, and very few Hyundais or battered old Toyotas. We’re down to two gas stations in town (from eleven thirty years ago), and we’ve got so many art galleries that my mother is convinced that they all serve as money-laundering fronts for the Mob. The high school today has 1/3rd fewer students than it did when I was a student. The streets are filled, as one wag put it to me recently, with “old people who’ve come to visit their parents.” There were very few children playing in the streets this weekend; the few children I did see were wearing Lacoste and Abercrombie rather than Sears, and they were all under the careful supervision of hovering parents.

On Sunday, we went through nearly a dozen “open houses”. Prices have come down a bit in recent months, but there’s nothing in my old neighborhood under $1.4 million (and that was for a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 1000 square-foot board and batten cottage.) Most of the newer places were in the range of $2.5-$5.0 million, and were largely devoid of charm. It was more than a little depressing, though we took not a little pleasure in making loud and censorious remarks within earshot of all available realtors. (What’s with all these damned pillars everywhere? OKOP don’t put up pillars.)

I never go to Carmel without walking the half-mile from my childhood home to “Tor House”, the stunning stone cottage built by my beloved Robinson Jeffers. Though his place is now a protected monument, what was once his isolated little corner of Carmel Point is now surrounded by the homes of others eager to claim (for several million dollars) their spot of paradise. But how can I condemn others for wanting to do as my family did? Those who got here first have no particular moral claim. Nevertheless, I always say the lines of one of Jeffers’ most famous poems to myself as I walk away. This part in particular is always with me:

…people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve…

I find more comfort in that than perhaps I ought.

Why divorce is scarier than unwed motherhood: some thoughts on class, children, autonomy, marriage and “Promises I Can Keep”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 13, 2007
in Books, Class, Family, Having children, Marriage and Sexuality
. 13 Comments

A little over a month ago, I picked up a copy of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. I heard about it from Lauren, who wrote a long post about the book by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. Lauren was inspired by a review of “Promises” written by Bitch Ph.D.

This is a powerful and important book. There are few groups in our society more consistently stigmatized than poor women (of any race, but particularly non-white women) who have children out of wedlock. Those of us in the middle class make a wide variety of assumptions about the motivations of the women who do become unwed teen mothers. Some of the assumptions are cruel in their falsehood (think of the “welfare queen” stereotype perpetuated by President Reagan). Others are both benign and clueless, such as the assumption that “these girls” just don’t know about birth control. And of course, in most such discussions, the role of the males who father these children is ignored.

One of the best aspects of “Promises I Can Keep” (and this gets touched on by both Lauren and Bitch Ph.D.) is its authors’ insight into how poor women interpret getting pregnant and having a child at a young age.

As I’ve blogged more than once, I got my high school girlfriend pregnant. We were very much in love; she was my “first” in every sense of the word. We knew about birth control, of course, but our use of protection was at best intermittent. When she got pregnant, we briefly fantasized about keeping the baby, about getting married, or about putting the baby up for adoption. But I was getting ready to go off to college, and she had another year of high school ahead of her. We both had dreams and plans and expectations that would have been derailed by a child. My girlfriend knew perfectly well that even if we chose adoption, carrying the baby to term would mean missing school, public embarassment (from which I would be conveniently immune), and it would mean the heart-wrenching surrender of a child she had carried for nine months. At barely sixteen, she was understandably not ready for all that. She had an abortion, and I was with her — as much as any man can be with a woman — as she went through it.

But of course, abortion appeared like the best alternative at the time because we both wanted and expected college. Our social class and our privilege made terminating the pregnancy the best possible option, because having a child would (especially in my girlfriend’s case) mean an end to (or at least a severe postponement of) of our ambitions. For many poor wonen, there are no social expectations of college and career to be derailed. The appeal of an abortion is thus considerably diminished.

Indeed, Edin and Kefalas point out that many poor women have a “radically different view” of abortion:

Virtually no women we spoke with believed it was acceptable to have an abortion merely to advance an educational trajectory… most believe that abortion is ‘the easy way out’ To them, ‘doing the right thing’ or ‘taking care of your responsibilities’ means bringing the pregnancy to term. And adoption is, to almost all, simply out of the question — it is generally viewed as ‘giving away’ your ‘flesh and blood.’

(My parents and my girlfriends’ parents both knew about the abortion — and they all said we were “doing the right thing.”)

The other fascinating part of the book I want to blog about today is the attitude that so many poor women in the study have towards marriage. Far from being contemptuous of the institution, the women whom Edin and Kefalas interview have an almost reverent attitude:

Poor women almost universally believe that marriage should be for life, and deride others who ‘get married just to get divorced.’ Most believe that marriage vows are sacred and ought to be held in the highest regard.

What’s fascinating, of course, is that the fear of divorce is much greater than the fear of having a child while still an unmarried teenager. That’s absolutely the reverse of how those of us raised in the comfortable, secular middle-class view the two issues. While most people in my social milieu weren’t divorced three times by thirty-five and married four times by forty as I was, more than half of the marriages in my extended family have ended in divorce in the past four decades. During that time, no woman in my entire extended family (and I am thinking now of dozens and dozens of second, third, and even fourth cousins) has had a child out of wedlock. During that time, only one woman in my family (a token evangelical) has had a child before at least the age of 27. We have had more babies born to women over 35 and even 40 than to women under 30.

So the secular WASPy middle-class might be accused of having a cavalier attitude towards marriage, though no one I know, including myself, got married “just to get divorced.” (I always expected my marriages to last, even though the first three all ended before the second anniversary.) We know that divorce is difficult and painful, but also entirely survivable. Having a child before one is grounded in a career and financially prepared to care for it seems infinitely more frightening to Our Kind of People than a failed marriage. (Or two. Or three.)

What’s helpful to me about a book like this is that it offers invaluable insight into what is, for me, a remarkably alien world. My feminism is sincere, but it’s also thoroughly white, and upper-middle class. Though my Christian faith reminds me that community is not unimportant, my feminism sees independence, personal responsibility, and autonomy as three essential components of human happiness. I want the young men and women with whom I work to become kind, thoughtful, educated and independent people. I want them to be well-educated, and exposed to ideas other than those with which they were raised. My classes at the community college, after all, are filled with single mothers in their teens, twenties and thirties. I see how exhausted and burdened they are. I honor their sacrifices, but I want their example to be cautionary!

But this book reminds me — as do many of my feminist colleagues — that not all young women are eager to embrace this feminist vision of personal autonomy. What I see as liberation, they see as alienation from the familiar (in both senses of the word). And rightly, they know that in the current economic climate, the odds of achieving real prosperity (the sort that enables a life of privileged individualism) are far too long. “Promises I Can Keep” makes the case that these young women who choose to raise their children outside of marriage aren’t nearly as short-sighted as many of us in the prosperous middle class tend to believe. What we often see as “failures of imagination” or an “inability to escape a dysfunctional culture”, these women often see as the best and most rational choices they can make given the options available.

So it’s an interesting question to ask young women:

Which seems to you more frightening?
1. having a child while young and unmarried
2. getting married and then divorced.

For the affluent middle-class, #1 is the easy and obvious answer. But for a great many others, it’s clear that the second is perceived as a much more significant, and thus scarier, personal failure. I’m going to find a way to work this discussion in to my women’s studies classes soon.

A note on being Hugo, one which contains a small Harry Potter spoiler

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 23, 2007
in Family and Stuff
. 18 Comments

I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, and though I saw the first film in a theater and the second film on a long Emirates flight, I haven’t been keeping up with the movie versions either. I’ve got no objection to the Potter books on artistic or theological grounds, and mine is not an aversion rooted in snobbery. It’s just that I can always think of something else I’d rather read.

That said, I’ve heard from several people this weekend who excitedly report that in the epilogue to the final story, two central characters end up married with children — and they name their son “Hugo.” One young man I work with came running up to me on Saturday to inquire what my name “really means”, convinced that there was some deep symbolism embodied in Rowling’s choice. My name, depending on which source text you use, means “bright” or (I like this better) “bright mind.” This revelation seemed deeply satisfying to the sixteen year-old who was querying me, and he went off quite pleased.

I was named for my father’s side of the family. “Hugo” was my father’s father’s father. He came from a family of Moravian Jews who had thoroughly assimilated, and thus he and his brothers all had these very Germanic names (Berthold and Ludwig were other choices). “Benedict”, my middle name, comes from the first name of another great-great-grandfather. (My brother, Philip Arthur, was named for my mother’s side of the family).

I grew up hating my name. The teasing started early; some of my readers will be old enough to remember the character “Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces” (a seemingly innocuous title that became a painful burden). One group of insipid children in third grade came up with the inspired “Hugo’s a go-go” (not that they really knew what go-go dancing entailed), and that monicker lasted throughout elementary school. I can remember wishing, at age ten or so, that I had been named “Mike”. That was by far the most popular boys’ name in my school, and it seemed just the sort of name that would act as a magical coat of protection against all sorts of insults. Once, while on the school bus, I tried to tell a new boy that my name was Mike, just to “try out” the new title; I was overheard and my deceit was greeted with cheerful howls of derision.

I began to appreciate my name in high school, largely because in my adolescence I began to value the very things I had been so ashamed of in my childhood. Where at nine or ten I had longed to fit in with all the other boys, at fifteen and sixteen I delghted in my uniqueness. I didn’t meet another Hugo until I was a seventeen year-old high school senior; I encoutered him at the California state Model UN convention. He was Hispanic, and when he introduced himself, asked “How did a white guy end up with a name like Hugo?” I was about to ask him a similar question; we had each assumed that Hugo belonged to a specific language group and were a bit thrown to discover that there are versions of Hugo in most Western European tongues.

I’ve met Dutch Hugos, Swedish Hugos, English Hugos and — by now — a great number of Hugos from Spanish-speaking families. Venezuala’s Chavez, with his infamy, has given the name a sinister touch (or, in the eyes of the fringe global left, a certain Fidelisque cachet). What I haven’t met yet is an American-born Hugo who doesn’t come out of a Hispanic background. I’ve corresponded with one or two, but haven’t yet met in person.

There is pleasure in an unusual name, though it is a pleasure I had to learn to love. I like knowing today that if I hear someone yell “Hugo” in a crowd, it is almost invariably for me. Yelling “Juan” or “Michael” (or, these days, “Hunter” or “Dylan”) often leads only to confusion. I like that I am easy to google, unlike my good friend Jennifer Brown or my dear colleague Steve Richards. The names that my wife and I have tentatively discussed for our future children, should the Lord bless us in that regard, will be kept secret until after the small ones arrive. But I can say that most of our options are indeed unusual. I fully expect my future son or daughter to go through a stage where they wish they had been named “Emily” or “Daniel” instead of the far more unusual name they’ve been given.

I like to scan the popular baby names provided by the Social Security Administration. My operating rule is that no child ought to be given a name from the top 50. Obviously, names go in and out of fashion; the current trend for boys’ names seems to be to mine the Old Testament, and for girls it seems trendy to turn to the likes of Jane Austen for inspiration. I didn’t know any “Avas” or “Jacobs” in my youth, and it seems that names like Lisa or Troy (which were hugely popular among those of us born in the mid-to-late ’60s) have all but vanished. But while one cannot predict long-term trends, one can predict what will be popular on elementary school rosters a few years from now. And it seems wise and good and right to pick with an eye towards the unusual, the ancient, the meaning-filled. Even if such a choice will lead a child to curse her parents when she is nine, she will surely rejoice in what is nearly uniquely hers when she is older.

I am a very happy Hugo Benedict.

Off for a while, and a note on vegan compromises

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 3, 2007
in Family, Holidays and Veganism
. 8 Comments

I know that some folks have had problems accessing this blog, and that it has “looked funny” when it has appeared. The problem seems to be with Powweb, the company with whom this site is hosted, but it may be with WordPress too.

At Feministe, not one but two long and interesting discussions about female genital mutilation and male circumcision, and the particular penchant of some folks in the men’s rights community to sugggest that the latter is comparable to the former. I stand by what I wrote on that subject last year. My own perspective is perhaps a bit better informed by personal experience than that of many who are weighing in.

We’re getting ready to go up to Northern California for a couple of days for the Independence Day holiday. The fact that I have relatively little patriotism in my heart has never stopped me from embracing with enthusiasm all of the outer trappings of jingoism; I will swathe myself in red, white, and blue tomorrow and join with many friends and family for a glorious celebration.

For sixty years, my family has made banana ice cream on the Fourth of July (a tradition that began in the 1930s, so far back that no living soul remembers exactly why and how banana was chosen). For the first time in my life, I won’t be eating that ice cream tomorrow. A year ago, I was still vegetarian with a willingness to eat dairy; I have gone full vegan since. It is at holidays — with the strong connectedness to traditions and foods — that being fully vegan is most challenging.

But I’ll take my turn cranking the ice cream maker, and pouring on the rock salt and the ice. My participation in the production of at least some non-vegan foods will continue. My family also raises chickens at our place up north; they are well-treated, and they lay eggs that need to be collected each morning. I no longer eat the eggs, but happily take my turn at niffling up to the barn to visit the hens, their rooster, and to gather their gifts in a little carrier for others to enjoy. I grew up around chickens, and we have a lot to say to each other.

No posting until Monday, July 9.

My younger siblings be smarter than me is!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2007
in Family and Father
. 3 Comments

It feels like the first full day of summer. It’s hot, and soon I’ll be hitting the trails of the Arroyo for a morning run. I’ve switched sunscreens — I’m trying to get rid of all the parabens in my grooming products, and am trying to make sure everything I put on my body is vegan, never tested on animals, and without suspected carcinogens. So far, I really like Alba Botanica.

No doubt you’ve seen the story about the statistical probability that first-born sons will turn out a wee bit smarter than their younger siblings. Though I don’t consider myself feeble-minded, I can say with absolute certainty that this did not prove to be the case in my family.

Both my younger brother and I were tested in the mid-1970s with the old Stanford-Binet IQ test. I did very well, but my brother was off the charts, quite a few points above me. I was twelve when, pilfering my mother’s desk, I found the two papers with our relative results — it was a memorable but hardly crushing moment in my youth. (I was an incorrigible snoop from about age 8 to 13). Luckily (because sometimes it seems to be more attributable to grace or luck than to virtue), I’ve never been jealous of my brother’s first-rate mind, or of his accomplishments. I will note that he and my two younger sisters followed me to Berkeley; each sibling had a higher GPA than his or her predecessor. The Schwyzer family defies the results of this little study.

It was a blessing to grow up with parents who made each of their children feel special, unique, talented, bright, and loved. We all ended up at the same university, but we never - I can say this with certainty - felt competitive with one another. On this, the first anniversary of my father’s death, I am grateful for many things, not least for his unconditional acceptance of the paths his two sons and two daughters chose. He loved us radically equally, and we knew it, and our closeness today is in many ways a consequence of that.

Rocky Shimon’s first pictures

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 14, 2007
in Chinchillas, Family and Photos
. 4 Comments

Here, here, here. He’s our second son, and he’s doing amazingly well given that his early life was characterized by consistent mistreatment.

My brother and his wife just had a son (of the human kind) born tonight in England: Matthew Hubert Schwyzer-Howell. I am a very proud uncle (and chinnie papa).