Archive for the 'Traveling' Category

The not-so-quiet American: a note from St Petersburg

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 01, 2010
in Traveling
. 5 Comments

I’ve spent the last day or so in St. Petersburg, and will be heading back down to Moscow tonight.

I spent almost the entire day yesterday on a city tour, including much (but certainly not all) of the Hermitage. We got started in the dark and finished in the dark — given that the sunrise isn’t until after 9:00 in the morning, that wasn’t as long a day as one might imagine.

I had lots of opportunities to talk to my guide, a St Petersburg native and an excellent English speaker. Over lunch (at the famous and vegetarian-friendly Café Idiot), we talked about Russian society and (since she she asked me what I did with myself) gender roles in our respective countries. Anna (not her real name) took the same view of both politics and male-female relationships: we human beings are under the influence of forces beyond our control. She volunteered willingly that she didn’t consider Russia to be a democracy, describing it instead (as many have in recent years) as an authoritarian state which tolerates a certain amount of freedom. Anna certainly prefers the present situation, however imperfect, to the USSR in which she was raised (she’s a few years younger than me, and was on the cusp of adulthood when the Soviet Union collapsed). But she regards voting as an exercise in futility; “All the important decisions are made by powers greater than us, and our vote has no effect on that.” Anna suggested tactfully something that any American who pays attention abroad will hear often: “Democracy is not the key to happiness, and I think that sometimes the USA connects the two too much.”

Anna took a similarly fatalistic, albeit cheerful, view of gender relations. “I think what you are talking about is fascinating”, she said with the politeness of someone whose services have been engaged, “but I think most men — and most women — can’t change their nature, and don’t want to.” She made a direct comparison between her belief that sex roles ought to be fixed more or less where they were and her belief that a benign authoritarian state guaranteeing security and an opportunity for at least a little prosperity was the best system of government. Anna suggested, with tact, that I — and perhaps many other Americans — placed far too much faith in the human capacity both to change and to self-regulate. Her cynicism about democracy, in other words, was rooted less in a belief that the current Russian government of Putin and his ilk wouldn’t permit it, and more in her conviction that most of her fellow Russians were too poorly informed or too blindly self-interested to be trusted with the electoral franchise. Having lived in the Soviet Union, as well as through the chaotic (and relatively democratic) transition under Boris Yeltsin, Anna finds the current regime (as undemocratic as it may be) to be vastly preferable to either. Similarly, she argued that a system which allowed women to work and be educated was of course better than one which didn’t permit either — yet Anna felt strongly that women should allow men to lead. “It’s more in their nature than it is in ours”, she insisted with a smile, shaking her head and laughing at what she saw as my naiveté about the mutability of gender roles.

My brother and I were both born in Santa Barbara, raised in the same home and with the same influences. (My half-sisters grew up in a slightly different environment). My brother has made his home in Europe, and is raising his three children in England and Austria. His worldview is hardly fatalist or quietist; he remains a thorough democratic socialist. But if I can speak of “souls”, his is far less American than mine. The sons of an Englishman born in Vienna and a mother descended from California pioneers, we were given two nationalities and exposed to different perspectives on the world and human possibilities. And I’ve come to see that the deepest aspect of my Americanness, if you will, lies in what Tocqueville noted nearly two centuries ago: an irrepressible belief in the human capacity for self-improvement and self-reinvention. I wouldn’t be so adamant about the myth of male weakness being just that, a myth, if I weren’t absolutely convinced (on historical, psychological, and experiential grounds) of the possibility for self-transformation. My brother doesn’t disagree with me about the need for progress, but he is alternately bemused and exasperated by what he (like lots of Europeans) sees as the mix of cheerleading and hectoring and preaching that is part of how Americans make the case for personal and political transformation to everyone else. (And often, as we both know that cheerleading is accompanied by military intervention, as the most powerful nation on earth engages in one of its quixotic liberal internationalist projects. When I read Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, I shuddered at how much I identified with Alden Pyle.) Like my father, he also worries that in a world with such enormous and pressing environmental and human problems — the tragedies of deforestation, of the Congo, Haiti, and Palestine — this focus on self-reinvention is both myopic and self-congratulatory. And I insist, like so many Americans, that self-transformation is a necessary pre-condition for global peace and justice, something that strikes so many folks elsewhere in the world as both back-to-front and hopelessly bourgeois.

I’m typing this blog in the lobby bar of my St Petersburg hotel. Snow is falling outside; Nevsky Prospect lies a few yards away. Soft Russian voices surround me, and the smell of cigarettes (permitted almost everywhere in this country, it seems) brings back memories of my smoke-saturated childhood. And I miss my wife and daughter even as I am so grateful for the opportunity to see this city I’ve long wanted to visit; I miss my home, my Los Angeles, my city unburdened by an over-long history, my irony-and-cynicism-free zone.

The safe male traveler

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 28, 2010
in Traveling
. 18 Comments

I’m in Moscow, a bit jet-lagged, getting ready for a guided tour of the Kremlin. My hotel has a lovely view of at least part of Red Square, and I managed a comfortable vegan breakfast this morning. I’m on my own for this trip, the main purpose of which is a lecture next week. My wife and daughter are back home, and it’s for the best — I’m not sure Heloise is ready for the cold. It’s -5 Fahrenheit outside, not counting the wind chill, as I write.

There’s a not entirely undeserved stereotype about men traveling alone. I’m fortunate to have traveled a great deal in recent years, often with my wife (and in the last year, quite a bit with my daughter), and also frequently alone. I’ve noted over and over again the subtle (and occasionally, not so subtle) distinction between the way I’m treated when I’m by myself and when we’re together as a family. I’m keenly aware — and this is probably an awareness rooted in my work — that I’m often seen as a potential predator when I’m by myself. Young women in the service sector (in nice hotels, for example) tend to be just a bit more guarded with me when I’m alone than when I’m with my wife. It’s not that my behavior is any different whether or not my spouse is with me; it’s that a great many women the world over know that single men can be “troublesome”, particularly for young women who are employed to serve them in some capacity.

Part of being a responsible single male traveler — particularly a relatively affluent male traveler in a less affluent country — is to be cognizant of the potential threat (and in a few instances, the potential opportunity) that one poses. I don’t hide from my Americanness (I may have a UK passport, but my manner and bearing are very much of the New World), and of course, I don’t disguise that I’m a man. I know very well the “ugly American” stereotype, and I know the stereotype (grounded in considerable but not universal truth) that men of my age traveling alone are very interested in using whatever leverage they have to get sex.

And so while I hope I’m hardly impolite when I’m with Eira and Heloise, I’m even more aware of my manners when I’m traveling abroad by myself. I know full well that though it might seem the job of hotel staff, for example, to put me at ease, it’s also my job to make them comfortable. That doesn’t mean I don’t ask for extra pillows if I need them (and I frequently do; I tend to like to build small fortresses on the bed). It does mean that when making requests, I make sure that I am cordial, appreciative, and utterly and unmistakably safe. Having a wedding ring helps, but the number of philandering traveling husbands (and, to be fair, wives) has done much to vitiate the power of that symbol to indicate a particular kind of safety.

I have a private tour guide this morning, a young woman who has already phoned twice to make sure I will meet her at the appointed place and time. I know that when we do meet in person, in about half an hour’s time, I will do my best to project myself as an earnest, inquisitive, ever-so-slightly bumbling, desexualized American. Yes, that comes naturally to me now (especially the bumbling bit).

I certainly don’t expect others to adopt my personality quirks. What I do think is reasonable is to ask ourselves — as well as our boyfriends and brothers, fathers and friends — how we behave when we’re alone “on the road” and around women whose livelihood requires serving us in some capacity. Do we flirt for validation? Do we tip more generously those who flirt with us, or those who are more attractive? If we do — and a great many men do — we aren’t having a little “innocent” fun. Ask women who have worked as a server in the food and beverage industry; flirtation is frequently mandatory. After all, there are few things more disheartening than watching a middle-aged man in a restaurant leer and fawn over a young waitress half his age merely because she doesn’t have the power to tell him off or avoid him. Most of us have seen this countless times.

It’s not enough to not be part of the problem. We — and in this case, I mean single male travelers and business professionals — have a moral obligation to make sure that those who are paid to care for us and provide us with comfort on our journeys know that we are safe. We each need to practice our own form of gentle, polite reassurance.

Oh, and newsflash, people: when you’re in a hotel, you tip the cleaning staff. Every day. Don’t wait until the day you check out to leave a single amount; the maids generally rotate, and everyone who comes to tidy your mess needs to be recognized.

Eastward ho

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 25, 2010
in Traveling
. 2 Comments

If you can read Russian, you know where I’m going and what I’m gonna be lecturing on next week. Hint: off to somewhere very cold. Will try and update while I travel.

For more updates on what I’m doing and where, friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, where I’m listed under my name.

The slut-shaming of Amanda Knox: an old and ugly Italian pattern plays out again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 04, 2009
in Sexuality, Teaching and Traveling
. 52 Comments

As a busy afternoon has faded into a quieter evening, I’ve been unable to get thoughts of the Amanda Knox conviction out of my mind. For those not in the loop, Knox is a 22 year-old American woman who was found guilty today by an Italian court of murdering her British housemate while both were students doing a year abroad in Perugia. Knox and her Italian boyfriend were convicted on what the vast majority of American observers considered to be circumstantial evidence, with no convincing evidence of a motive, and after another man unconnected to Knox and her fella had already been convicted of the crime. The murder of the young English woman, Meredith Kercher, took place in 2007, and the story has been given sensational coverage throughout the European media, particularly in Italy and the UK. The allegations — never proved to the satisfaction of most — that Knox and her beau had killed Kercher as part of a bizarre sexual ritual were captivating; the prettiness of the young women involved and the luridness of the story spun by the prosecution generated tremendous global interest.

In the fall of 2000, I taught a semester abroad in Florence. I traveled with one other teacher and 45 Pasadena City College students, two-thirds of whom were female. The vast majority of Americans who study abroad are women, for a variety of reasons, and our trip was no exception. We warned our students about the attitudes that many Italians have towards young American women; we advised them about the different “street environment” they could expect to find in Florence. But even I, who had traveled extensively in Italy before going as a professor, was stunned by the attitudes we encountered. The reputation of American “girls” as sexually undiscriminating, freed for the first time from the watchful eyes of parents and at least most of their peers, was nearly universal. And while it is certainly true that for the young and not-so-young, travel is almost invariably an aphrodisiac and a notorious compromiser of inhibitions, the beliefs about American women students were grounded far more in myth and media than in reality.

Still, some of the young women on our trip did have flings with the locals; a few did find Italian boyfriends, as Amanda Knox did. There were some heartbreaks and some scares. I half-jokingly told my students, in one of our pre-trip meetings, that I had only three rules for them: No jails, no hospitals, and no unintended pregnancies. We had a couple of students picked up by the cops (and then released, for smoking marijuana with local lads), we had one tragic incident that left one of our guys paralyzed for life from the waist down. It was an eventful trip. But though there was a lot of drinking and quite a few short-term affairs, for the most part our students emerged unscathed. And whatever they were doing, they treated Florence and the rest of the country with respect and the kind of wide-eyed wonder so natural among youngsters from the New World making their first serious visit to the heart of the Old.

I hated the contempt for our students that I so often heard from some in Florence and elsewhere. Though it was often tinged with anti-Americanism (and this while Clinton was still in the White House), it was directed almost exclusively towards our female students — particularly the ones who were perceived as more attractive, or who wore more revealing clothing. The prosecutor in the Amanda Knox devoted extensive time to discussing the defendant’s sex life and her occasionally flamboyant dress, even her taste in (or lack of) underwear. Her diary, replete with the personal details one would expect in a private journal, has been read repeatedly in court. The vulgar British tabloids labeled her “Foxy Knoxy” and “No Knicks Knox”; it was a world-class exercise in cruelty and slut-shaming. Apparently, to the amazement of even Italian legal experts (familiar with the guilty-until-proven innocent style of jurisprudence in that country) the paper-thin case, built more on animosity towards sexually adventurous American girls than actual evidence, worked today. Knox and her boyfriend face a quarter-century in prison, but have a chance to have that reduced on appeal.

Before, during, and after I taught in Florence I never believed that Yanks abroad ought to be above the law. A dual citizen myself, I have no patience for the “ugly American” code of conduct. (I will note, having mentioned my British passport, that tourists from the UK were often far more poorly behaved on Italian beaches and in Italian nightclubs than were students from the States.) At the same time, I have no patience with reflexive anti-Americanism of the sort that many of my students, no matter how polite, ran into all too frequently. And as a feminist professor, I was and am particularly disgusted by the mix of prudish censoriousness towards and predatory fascination with the sex lives of young women from America who come to Italy to study.

When I look at the face of Amanda Knox, I see someone who looks a great deal like many of the students I taught. When I hear the details of her private life discussed with both salacious enthrallment and affected repugnance, I think of the experiences of so many of my students who went abroad with me. When I hear the twisted, groundless narrative that the prosecution offered, something along the lines of “American girl is sexually curious and open about it and she smoked pot: therefore it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to stabbing one’s prudish roommate to death”, I’m enraged and indignant. What happened to Amanda Knox — and I am nearly as convinced of her innocence as her parents — could have happened to a dozen young women I knew and taught in Italy.

Make no mistake, I grieve the loss of Meredith Kercher and the horrible way she died. But I have little doubt that if Knox had been a little less pretty, a little less sexual, and a little less American, she’d never have spent a day in prison for her roommate’s murder. On her behalf, and on behalf of others like her, I am very angry tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 24, 2009
in Traveling
. 5 Comments

I’ll be in Northern California from tonight until Sunday, doing the vegan Thanksgiving thing with the loved ones. Posting resumes next week.

Atlanta bound

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 10, 2009
in Traveling
. 1 Comment

I’m off to Atlanta for the National Women’s Studies Association Conference; posting will resume on Monday.

“Better-looking when I leave”: a short note on vanity, aging, and Los Angeles

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 02, 2009
in Eating disorders, Traveling, Vanity and Youth
. 21 Comments

After a few days back in Los Angeles following a dozen on the East Coast — and after a few months of living in West Los Angeles again after thirteen years in Pasadena — I’m feeling once again twinges of discomfort about spending so much of my life in a place that, for all its merits, is so famously focused on looks.

Yesterday, I chatted with Meredith, who cuts my hair. Meredith is from Mississippi, and herself recently back from a trip to her hometown on the Gulf Coast. She asked me about my trip to the East, and I remarked “Everytime I leave Los Angeles, I feel as if I get better looking.” Meredith laughed loudly, and agreed; the stylist next to her and her client chimed in with their assents. What started was a four-way conversation among the two stylists and their clients (all non-natives) about the toll that living in L.A., particularly on the Westside, takes on one’s self-image.

I’ve always struggled with vanity and body issues; in previous posts, I’ve talked about my struggle with a serious eating disorder and exercise addiction. I’m much more content and self-accepting in my forties than I was in my twenties, and that is a blessing. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t, with disappointing regularity, find myself studying my figure in a mirror or assessing the fit of my clothes, wishing that I were as lean as I was when I was at my thinnest. (Never mind that my thinnest years, though they corresponded with very fast running times, were also in most respects my unhappiest.) Becoming a father has been a huge help; focusing on a child is an excellent distraction and an effective palliative for narcissism. (How awful would it be if it weren’t!) Yet there’s no denying that my desire to be thin has not yet left me. I’ve said it before: I’ve been blessed, thanks to therapy and hard work and grace, with great success in overcoming so many of my addictions. My body dysmorphia and my anxieties about weight, however, remain with me to a far greater degree than I would like to admit.

Here’s the thing: I don’t realize until I leave Los Angeles how much more comfortable in my own skin I feel in other places. In New York, I invariably feel less self-conscious, even on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, than I do here in Southern California. And when I’m in Europe — even in fashion-conscious places like Paris or Florence or Mayfair — I don’t feel that sense that I’m too old. To put it another way, I feel more visible virtually everywhere else. I’ve written before, and many other feminists have as well, about the ways in which aging women are made invisible. There’s no question that we erase “older” women from our gaze in a way that we don’t with men; I’m keenly conscious that my authority as a teacher, for example, only grows with age. But though middle-aged men (I am certainly middle-aged now) are far less often rendered invisible than their female peers, I’ve felt — perhaps because of my unfortunate character defect of vanity — the way in which I too am more likely to “disappear” as I grow older. At least, I feel this keenly when I’m in West L.A.

I’m not writing this post to fish for compliments. I’m certainly not writing to complain about how tough it is to be me. I’m a damned lucky man in virtually every imaginable respect. But this character defect that leads me to be unduly concerned with my own appearance, this anxiety about my weight and my attractiveness that, while blessedly diminished lingers with me still, this puerile self-absorption — this , this, this is exacerbated by place. I wouldn’t go back to my younger, presumably “hotter” days for all the tea in China; the anxiety was crippling and the narcissism repellant. But I will say, as I move more deeply into that long and ill-defined period known as mid-life, that there are many other places I would rather live than here.

Heading east

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 17, 2009
in Traveling
. 1 Comment

I’m getting ready to leave town, flying out to New York on a red-eye tonight. I’ll be on the east coast all next week for a variety of reasons both spiritual and academic; a week hence, I’m the guest speaker at Brown University’s “Consent Day”. The event is open only to the Brown community, and I’ll be speaking on “Negotiating Consent and Myths of Male Weakness”. I’m also planning to do a workshop with a male-only group after my talk.

It should be noted that I am available to give this presentation elsewhere; it’s gone very well in the past and I have high hopes for next week in Providence. If you’re a college or university looking for a guest speaker to talk about men and feminism or issues around consent, I’d love to chat about the possibilities. Email me at hbschwyzer@gmail.com

In any case, this means that posting will be light to non-existent over the next ten days or so, though some reflections on the Brown event will certainly be forthcoming.

Home again, and giving thanks for Britain

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 22, 2009
in Family, Father and Traveling
. 14 Comments

We’re home from a fortnight in the UK. My wife and I took Heloise and my wife’s mother with us on the trip; for the latter two, it was their first visit to Britain. (Our daughter was in my wife’s tummy when we were in Europe last summer, but no passport was required at that point.) The ratio of three adults to one infant is a good one for travel, and we’re blessed with a daughter who is an easy flyer. (I’m proud to say that the Cabin Service Director on our BA flight to Heathrow called her “the little angel” as we got ready to deplane.)

I took everyone to visit Kingston Lisle, the tiny Oxfordshire village in the Vail of the White Horse where my father grew up. We knelt at the graves of my paternal grandparents (noting that we need to hire someone to redo the headstones), stayed at a glorious hotel in nearby Great Milton, and enjoyed the Cotswolds before heading on to Carmarthenshire, Devon, and Cumbria. We took my English nephew to see his hometown side, Exeter City, play their first home match of the season. And we finished the trip in the glorious Lake District, which was the only place where we dealt with rain.

My father, born in Vienna and, from the age of three, raised as a war refugee in England, had four children. My younger brother decided years ago that he felt more at home in Britain than in America; he and his family make their home in Exeter, where my brother is now associate professor of English. My two nephews and my niece are growing up with Devonian accents; they are culturally English. My sister Elizabeth lived and worked in Britain for nearly a decade before returning home two years ago; my youngest sister and I have never lived for any great length of time in the UK, but visit regularly. All four of us have two passports; each of us feels a different degree of connection to that “green and pleasant land.”

My love for Britain isn’t rooted in ethnic heritage; on my mother’s side, I’ve got some ancestors from that sceptered isle, but far more from the continent. The love I have is rooted in many things, but perhaps most plainly in my family’s history. My paternal grandmother, Elisabeth von Schuh, was born in Vienna to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father; her husband, Georg Schwitzer (the spelling would later be changed) was born Jewish but converted to Catholicism when he married. My father was uncircumcised and baptized, but was ethnically 3/4ths Jewish; that latter fact would have meant a death sentence for him and the rest of the family following Hitler’s takeover of Austria in 1938. My grandfather, a gentle physician, wasn’t eager to leave; like many, he thought things wouldn’t “get that bad” for Viennese Jews (who were used to anti-Semitism as a political prop.) My late grandmother knew better, and she explored every avenue she could to get the family out.

It was Great Britain that welcomed in my father’s family. Not the USA (my grandmother tried that option). Not France (lucky, too, given what would happen to French Jews during the war.) The only door that opened was for Britain, which was willing to take certain Jewish professionals, especially doctors. The family escaped just before the outbreak of World War Two, and after a brief period in London, settled in what was then Berkshire and is now Oxfordshire, in a place called Fawler Manor just outside of Kingston Lisle. Though my grandfather was briefly interned as an enemy alien, he was eventually released and allowed to practice medicine. While my grandmother and her children stayed in the south, he went to work as the staff doctor at the refinery in Ellesmere Port, Lancashire — where he would die in a car accident in 1947.

It was the English who cared for my family before, during, and after the Second World War. My father left England at 24 to go to graduate school at Berkeley, but England never left him. The fundamental decency of that culture stayed with him all his life. He lived 47 years in the USA, but never got an American passport — he only wanted one citizenship, that of the one country that had opened its door and saved his family from the worst mass murder in human history. His California-born children all got their UK passports as soon as they could, and we all use them with varying frequency; we honor our father and we honor the land that became his home.

It was the British (the Scots are as British as any) who gave the Lockerbie bomber his compassionate release this week. Whether it was deserved in this case is debatable, but it is worth noting that compassionate release for the terminally ill is far more common in the United Kingdom than in the States (or anywhere else I know of). While the American attitude tends to be “let the man rot”, or more commonly, “fry his ass”, the attitude of at least a plurality of Britons is far more humane. And I see a direct link between the compassionate release of Abdelbaset al Mograhi this week and the compassionate welcome my father’s family received nearly seven decades ago. My family were escapees from mass murder rather than agents thereof, but the decency that undergirds the very existence of the concept of compassionate release was the same impulse that saved my father’s life.

Could I live in Britain? Perhaps. Not in London, which I find delightful but exhausting. To quote Cerys Matthews, the sublime and lovely Welsh pop star for whom my daughter is only partly named, “I come alive/outside the M25″ (the ring road around the capital.) I love the northeast, particularly Durham and Northumbria, but my brother’s location in the southwest makes a good case for a second home there. But perhaps, like my Dad, I am destined to spend the majority of my life in the once Golden State, making regular visits to somewhere greener, somewhere wetter, somewhere somehow just a bit kinder.

In any case, it’s good to be back. More blogging to come soon.

Assorted daddy thoughts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 15, 2009
in Family, Father and Traveling
. 4 Comments

My wife, daughter, mother-in-law and I spent a very happy weekend in New York. We saw family and friends and kept ourselves very busy. I didn’t start visiting Manhattan regularly until a decade or so ago — and now, increasingly, I see it as somewhere I could live. (My dear wife would embrace that idea very eagerly.) The pace at which things happen is indeed satisfactory, and the fear of boredom is allayed in so many countless ways by that marvelous city.

It was the baby’s first long plane ride, and if I do say so myself she and her carers acquitted themselves splendidly. I now consider myself an old hand at wrangling strollers down jet ways and changing diapers in the lavatory in the midst of not-inconsiderable turbulence. My wife and I arranged our meals to be served separately, so that one could hold Heloise while the other ate. And oh, the blessing of a happy baby whose delicate ears are untroubled by landings and takeoffs. Heloise barely cried at all, and spent most of her waking time charming the FAs and her fellow passengers. (We are lucky parents, we know.)

I’ve got a post or two about feminist co-parenting (from the limited perspective, of course, of a first-time papa to a not-quite five-month old) in the hopper. For now, let me say simply how much I love being a father. There is nothing singular about this experience I’m having; many of my readers have had it or are having it, some many times over. But my goodness, what an extraordinary delight this girl is! And how extraordinary too to discover in myself reservoirs of patience and energy that I had no idea existed, reservoirs that might have gone untapped had my wife and I not had this little girl. Continue reading ‘Assorted daddy thoughts’

Off until Monday

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 26, 2009
in Family and Traveling
. 1 Comment

I’ll be away from the blog until Monday morning. My littlest sister is getting married up in Santa Barbara this weekend, and we’ll be gathering together in and around that city of my birth for the next few days. Heloise Cerys is two months old today, and we leave this afternoon for her first “road trip.” Ingmar the Volvo is packed to the gills, the hotel has already confirmed a crib in the bedroom, and we’re ready to embark with joy and a tiny degree of trepidation on another “first.”

Comments may languish in moderation longer than usual as a result. Your famous forbearance, my readers, is appreciated.

Of dreams and fathers: Barack Obama, growing up abroad, baseball, cricket, and daddies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 02, 2008
in Father, Foreign Policy, Memories, Politics, Race and Traveling
. 0 Comments

Among the various books I read on our trip to New Zealand was Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. I’d put it off for some time, but started it on the long flight down to Auckland and finished it in a Sydney hotel room. It’s the best book I’ve read by a president (or president-elect), and I’ve at least glanced at most of what our recent office-holders have produced. (I tried to read Bill Clinton’s massive autobiography, but ended up getting overwhelmed by detail, and skipped about.)

It’s not original to note that Barack Obama is an extraordinary figure, absolutely unlike anyone we’ve ever seen in American politics — at least, absolutely unlike anyone who has risen so far, so fast. Dreams from my Father, which is all the more powerful because it seems to be written by a man without any conscious sense that his words might be used against him someday, reveals Obama to be more exceptional than I had previously imagined.

It would be a bit ridiculous to say that I identify with our president-elect. I not only have not achieved what he has achieved, I have not had to overcome the obstacles he has had to overcome. (Though addiction and mental illness posed challenges that my socio-economic and ethnic circumstances did not.) But all good autobiography contains universal themes; we all have parents, after all, about whom we have often mixed feelings. Many of us struggle to discern a purpose and direction for our lives, and go through a quarter-life crisis of confidence. Barack Obama’s journey, in a broad sense, is a common one, though in its specifics it is both unique and jaw-droppingly impressive.

One of the things that I like best about Obama is that he has lived abroad; indeed, more than any other president in recent memory, he spent a significant portion of his childhood outside America (in Indonesia). Obama doesn’t hold dual citizenship as I do, and despite the slurs of a handful of ignoramuses, his devotion to the United States is unquestioned by any serious person. But he has tasted living abroad, and not only doing so, but doing so in comparative poverty. Not all international experience is the same. It’s one thing for the scion of a wealthy family to do a junior year at the Sorbonne, living off parent’s money; it’s another thing altogether to live as Obama did as a child, playing with street children in rural Indonesia. Anyone who is going to make claims for American exceptionalism ought to have had some first-hand experiences of living in — and not just visiting — other parts of the world. Though the child is not always the father of the man, reading Obama’s biography makes me hope that it will be so, particularly in regards to how he thinks about America’s place in the world. Continue reading ‘Of dreams and fathers: Barack Obama, growing up abroad, baseball, cricket, and daddies’

Home from the Antipodes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 01, 2008
in Traveling
. 4 Comments

I’m back in the office on a crisp Monday morning; Advent is upon us. We’ve got two more weeks of teaching and a week of finals; I give my last exam on December 18 and then enjoy some freedom until January 12.

My wife and I returned yesterday afternoon from a trip to Australia and New Zealand. In the former country, we spent a mere two days in Sydney, but enjoyed a lengthier stay on the South Island of the latter. New Zealand is as gorgeous and welcoming as advertised, and the recent resurgence of the US dollar was immensely helpful to us as we traveled about. We spent Thanksgiving in a little lodge just outside of Kaikoura, two hours north of Christchurch. No turkey for us, of course, though we missed our kith and kin.

I gave a lecture on Kabbalah and Christianity to a small audience at the Crowne Plaza hotel in central Auckland on Saturday night, and on Sunday, before heading to the airport, had a coffee with my cyberfriend John Fox. John was one of my very first commenters at my old blogspot place; he’s been a steady reader since 2003. It was a delight to meet him in person, and chat about the state of the Anglican Communion and the new NZ prime minister, amongst other topics.

And I can now say that not only have I set foot on all seven of the world’s continents, I have gone for a run on all seven. My late uncle Peter was part of that small and mad group who have done marathons on all seven (including the great frozen one in the south); I cannot say the same, having confined all my distance work to the USA and Europe. But when we were in Antarctica in January, I jogged — for about ten minutes — up and down an icy hill. Last week, I went for a run around the Sydney Harbour, and can now claim to have strutted my proverbial stuff on each continent. My wife, I should note, has had a very busy year: she has been on all seven continents in 2008 alone, which is impressive. Fear not; carbon credits for all of this flying about have been purchased.

We’re going to be homebodies for a bit; the longest trip we have planned for December is a drive up to Northern California over the Christmas break. Lectures need giving, papers need grading, book proposals need still further revamping, chinchillas need feeding, and — certainly not least in importance — the house needs decorating for the season.

More soon.

Election eve, with prayerful and (almost) fearless predictions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 03, 2008
in Politics and Traveling
. 11 Comments

My wife and I spent the weekend down in Mexico City. Though we’ve spent a bit of time in South America (many visits to her mother’s native Colombia, as well as Chile and Argentina), we hadn’t gone to Mexico yet together. And though I did some missions work in a small village in southern Sinaloa for a few consecutive summers, I had never been to what is by far the largest city in North America. According to my mother (in a rare moment of “TMI”), I was conceived in a Mexico City hotel room sometime in August, 1966. So for those who hold that life begins at conception, Hugo Schwyzer embarked upon this journey of life south of the border.

In any event, we had a wonderful time. We stayed in a small, spare, painfully hip boutique hotel in the Polanco district, but spent as much time as possible touring about. We both adored Coyoacan and the Kahlo/Rivera museums, as well as wandering through neighborhoods like San Angel and the stunning Chapultepec park. And of course, we were in town for Dia de los Muertos. My Spanish is getting better, but I still rely too heavily on my wife to do the translating. I’ve got the “Rosetta Stone” Spanish DVDs sitting at home, waiting for an as-of-yet non-existent free hour.

Folks, there will be only election-related posts through Wednesday. “Regular” blogging to resume by the end of the week. My endorsements are here.

Four years ago, I posted this the day before George W. Bush was re-elected: God, Voting, and Election Eve. I re-read it this morning, and winced when I read these lines:

I’m also increasingly optimistic about the chances of a Kerry victory. My own electoral college prediction (why not, it’s free) is that Kerry wins 284-254. Bush will concede on Friday of this week, I imagine. The Democrats will have a net gain of one Senate seat, or so I predict.

I was a lousy, and very disappointed, prognosticator. And it is once again election eve, and one very clear instinct within me says “For heaven’s sakes, Hugo, don’t make any more predictions. You jinxed it last time.” As the New York Times reported a couple of days ago, liberals across the country are tying themselves into knots of anxiety; from Berkeley to Braintree, Ann Arbor to Austin, we lefties are united as much in our longing for an Obama victory as we are in our not entirely unreasonable fear that “something” will happen (as it did in Florida in 2000, or Ohio in 2004), to dash all of our hopes.

I’ve worked hard in my life to overcome my supersititiousness and magical thinking. What socks I wear, what inanimate objects I clutch, what phrases I mindlessly recite will have no bearing on the outcome of sporting events or elections. What matters is how I vote, and the degree to which I am able to provide time, money, or inspiration to the campaigns in which I believe. And predicting doom, while it may serve to provide some grim satisfaction when and if the nightmare comes true, is no way to get through life.

So here’s my sensibly optimistic prediction for tomorrow’s election. Continue reading ‘Election eve, with prayerful and (almost) fearless predictions’

A rambling post about patriotism and “home”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 03, 2008
in Traveling
. 4 Comments

Sudy recently returned from a long working trip to the Philippines. (I visited, very briefly, in January.)

She reflects on her love for America:

In my years as a social justice and human rights advocate, I have never uttered the phrase out loud: “I love my country.” There are too many things I’ve seen to be able to say that phrase out aloud without qualifying what exactly it is that I love when there are so many things I can’t stand. But, inside, I have a deep love for my country despite all the tragedy, sin, mistakes, and horrible history of slavery, war, and cowboy politics…

In my work with other social justice advocates, they remain hostile to their citizenship and the stars and stripes. They balk at the soaring bald eagle and roll their eyes at the fireworks on the 4th of July. I remain silent, wondering how to both love and resist your citizenship.

Sudy notes that in other countries, far more self-described progressives seem to have an easier time expressing patriotic feeling, presumably because their nations wield less might.

Her post had me thinking about my own mixed feelings about America. Like Sudy, I am torn. When I watched the Republican convention last night, and heard the crowd burst into a spontaneous chant of “USA! USA! USA!”, I did indeed roll my eyes. I didn’t watch the Democratic convention (I was out of the country), but would have had the same response. It’s not just my presumption about the politics of those chanting it, it’s the implication of superiority I hear in the chant itself.

I realize I’m a bit of a caricature. A forty-something Berkeley-educated, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening, Pilates-doing, vegan gender studies professor on his fourth marriage is the sort of person easy for conservatives to ridicule. (Actually, I’m pretty easy for people across the political spectrum to ridicule, but let that pass.) I also have something most Americans don’t have, which is a second passport. Though on my mother’s side I’m a sixth-generation Californian and a thirteenth-generation American, my father was an Austrian war refugee raised in England. I have, as a result, two citizenships and two passports. (I travel on both, following the “shortest line” rule.) And in a real sense, it means multiple allegiances. Continue reading ‘A rambling post about patriotism and “home”’