Latest / Mechonomist Podcast / Welcome Home Hank!!!

Transcript

Welcome Home Hank!!! · Mechonomist Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, after spending 12 weeks in the hospital, my son came home yesterday, Hank Silverman Hyden.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's adjusted age is officially one day old, but he's actually been alive for three months in one day.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was a remarkable experience to say the least.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not fun, very stressful.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the people at Ronald McDonald House,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: the March of Dimes,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: UAB Women's and Infant Center,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: and UAB Arts something,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: some arts therapy thing,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: just people were great.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The doctors, nurses, techs, everything, everybody was just fucking amazing.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: and they made it as painless as it could possibly be and i will never forget what
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: people have done for us um over the past 12 weeks and that's just that's like
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: including our community who has stepped up and provided emotional support financial
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: support you know just being there for us so many people and uh i just we couldn't
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: have done it without y'all um
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: We really couldn't.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And his name is Hank Silverman Hyden.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Henry Hank Silverman Hyden.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hank is his nickname, but we're going to call him that.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I finally talked Robin into calling him Hank.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's Hank after Hank Williams 1, 2, and 3.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I wanted to name him.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But his real name is Henry Silverman Hyden.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And Henry is a family name.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: it's uh my wife's grandfather's name silverman is was the name of my mother's
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: father before he changed it because of anti-semitism he was a new york jew who
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: moved down to alabama to begin a different life and he changed his name from
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: silverman to ellison and we're trying to
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Revive that name a bit.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then Hyden is my wife's family name.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all traced through basically matrilineally through the women in our family,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is a little bit different.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also kind of different that a lot of times these days people are trying to
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: name their kids real unique names.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we went a more traditional direction with our names.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we're unique by being traditional, I guess.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I'm going to say, I got to say something political or it won't work for this.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: What I saw at Ronald McDonald House and UAB Women's and Infants Center was what
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: could be characterized as socialist feminism because it's not utopian.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's still within a capitalist institutional framework, but that was all about women and children.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've never been in a context in which women and children were centered.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I came out of it thinking, why don't we do that as a society?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Without women and children, there is nothing.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing at all.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they paid our mortgage for one month.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: They provided financial resources.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: They paid our phone bill.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: We were just taken care of.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you wonder why the entire economy can't be that way.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: If this large multimillion dollar institution can be this way, why can't larger society be this way?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't larger society center women and infants and women and children in a way
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: that would benefit everyone?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you center women and children, you're going to benefit the men, too.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: It benefited me, for sure.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it benefited Hank.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: It benefited Robin.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to write about this in my book as, you know, a framework for a utopian type of society.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: if this had been capitalist social relations,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: it would have been the most brutal experience you could have possibly had.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was something else.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it, to me, is socialist feminist.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we could call it other things.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter what you call it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's the social relations that matter.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the institutions that are founded on the concept of caring for others,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: in this society,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: profoundly revolutionary.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you to everybody.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being there and having our back.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, from the bottom of my heart, I can't tell you how much it means to me.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: I really can't.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all.